
Copyright }J" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES 



EDITED BY 



M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE ^, .-> 

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ROBERT E. LEE 

BY 

WILLIAM P. TRENT 



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ROBERT E. LEE 



WILLIAM P. TRENT 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
MDCCCXCIX 



Copyright^ i8gg 
By Small^ Maynard iff Company 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



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Press of 
George H. Ellis^ Boston 






1. 



TO BRANDER MATTHEWS. 

Who makes gratitude a pleasure and friend- 
ship an inspiration. 



The photogravure used as a frontispiece 
to this volume is from a photograph by 
Homeier & Glarlc^ Richmond^ of a por- 
trait by William G. Browne^ now in the 
possession of the Westmoreland Club, 
Richmond. It is here reproduced by the 
courteous permission of the owners. The 
present engraving is by John Andrew & 
Son, Boston. 



PREFACE. 

In preparing this little volume ^ I have 
drawn freely upon the larger biographies 
of General Lee, particularly upon the elabo- 
rate and excellent one by the late General 
A. L. Long, and upon those of General 
Fitzhugh Lee, Rev. J. William Jones, and 
Professor Henry A. White. Their love of 
their great subject makes me feel sure that 
the surviving authors will not begrudge lend- 
ing of their substance to a writer who fully 
acknowledges his indebtedness to them, and 
whose sole desire is to add a small tribute 
to the ever -increasing fame of one of the 
worWs noblest sons. In order, however, to 
secure substantial accuracy, I have used 
many books bearing on the war for tJie 
Union, such as " Gy^anVs Memoirs,'''' Dr. 
Ropes'' s ^^ Story of the Civil War,^^ Hen- 
derson^ s ^^ Stonewall Jackson,'''' Rachels 
"Life of General George Gordon Meade,^^ 
etc., and have consulted the records where 
it seemed necessary. I must frankly admit 
that, in the course of my studies, I was 



X PEEFACE 

often tempted to abandon them in despair ; 
for nearly every author seemed bent on 
defending his own hero from every possible 
criticism^ and on praising such commanders 
on the other side as his own favorite had 
defeated. In the mental confusion that 
overcame me during this bewildering read- 
ing^ I was almost rash enough to conclude 
tJiat, ivith a few books and a steadfast de- 
termination to praise Lee, I could acquit 
myself of my task in a most determined and 
manful fashion ; but now that it is finished 
I am apprehensive that, not being a special- 
ist hi military history, I have fallen into 
errors even in my bare outline sketch. If 
I have, I trust that they icill be forgiven 
me because I have loved much. For my 
enthusiasm I do not ask to be forgiven, 
although I know that that is a serious fault 
in these critical days. My admiration for 
General Lee has always been considerable, 
but I questioned the full greatness of his 
powers until I began to study his life closely. 
Then I learned to see him as he is, — not 



PREFACE xi 

merely a great son of my own native State j 
not merely a great Southern general^ not 
merely a great American in whom citizens 
of every section may talce just pride, hut, 
better than all these, a supremely great and 
good man, whose fame should not he limited 
by the cJmracteristic conceptions of patriot- 
ism so rife among us to-day, hut should he 
as wide as humanity, or, better still, as his 
own exquisite spirit of charity and brotlierly 
love. ^ p TRENT. 

Sewanee, Tenn., March 1, 1899. 



CHRONOLOGY. 

1807 
January 19. Robert E. Lee was born at 
Stratford, Westmoreland County, Va. 

1811 
His family removed to Alexandria. 

1818 
His father died while Lee was in the 
midst of his schooling, 

1825 
Entered West Point. 

1829 
Graduated second in his class. His 
mother died. Assigned to duty at 
Hampton Roads, Va. 

1831 
June 30. Married Mary Randolph Cusl :;s. 
of Arlington. 

1834-37 
Assistant to chief engineer of the army. 

1837 
June, Took charge of improvement of 
Miississippi at St. Louis. 



xiv CHRONOLOGY 

1838 
Made captain of engineers. 

1841 
At Fort Hamilton, in New York Har- 
bor, in charge of defences. 

1844 
Appointed visitor to West Point. 

1846-47 
Rendered distinguished services in Mexi- 
can War. 

1848 
January-June. Stationed in Mexico. 

1849-52 
At work on the defences of Baltimore. 

1852-55 
Sui)erintendent of West Point Academy. 

1855 
April. Appointed lieutenant colonel of 
the Second Cavalry. 

1856-59 
Saw service against Indians in Texas. 

1859 
October. Suppressed the John Brown in- 
surrection. 



CHEONOLOGY xv 

1860 
February. Took charge of Department 
of Texas where he stayed one year. 

1861 
March 1. Eeturned to Arlington to his 
family. 

March 16. Appointed colonel of First 
Cavalry. 

April 18. Offered command of United 
States armies. 

April 20. Eesigned commission in army. 
April 23. Accepted command of Vir- 
ginia forces. 

May- July. Organized troops and advised 
President Davis in Eichmond. 
August-October. Was in charge of abor- 
tive campaign in Western Virginia. 
November. Had charge of coast defences 
in South Carolina and Georgia until in 

1862 
March. He became military adviser to 
President Davis. 

June 1. Assumed command of Army of 
Northern Virginia. 



xvi CHEOKOLOGY 

1862 (continued') 
June 26--July 2. Commanded Confeder- 
ates in Seven Days^ fighting around 
Bichmond. 

August 30. Defeated Pope at second Ma- 
nassas. 

September 5. Crossed the Potomac. Be- 
gan advance into Maryland. 
September' 12. Drew battle of Antietam 
or Sharpsburg. Abandoned campaign 
of invasion. 

December 13. Won a victory over Burn- 
side at Fredericksburg. 
December. Was in winter quarters until 
March. 

1863 
May 2-3. Won a victory over Hooker at 
Chancellorsville. 

May 10. His great lieutenant, ^^ Stone- 
wall'^ Jackson, died. 
June. Began movements leading up to 
second invasion of the Korth. 
July 1-3. Defeated at Gettysburg. 
July 4-13. Made a masterly retreat and 
recrossed the Potomac. 



CHEONOLOGY xvii 

1863 (co7itinued) 
Octoher-Novemher. Conducted the inef- 
fective campaign of Mine Eun. 
December. Lay in winter quarters on the 
Eapidan until April. 

1864 
May 5-6. Fought the Battle of the Wil- 
derness against Grant. 
May 8-18. Conducted fighting about 
Spottsylvania Court-house. 
May 21- June 1. Conducted operations 
on interior lines. 

June 2-3. Fought a fierce battle at Cold 
Harbor. 

June 18. Joined Beauregard at Peters- 
burg. Siege of Petersburg began. 
July 30. Fought the Battle of the Crater. 

1865 
February 9. Issued his first general order 
as commander-in-chief. 
A2)ril 2. Eetreated from Petersburg. 
End of the siege. 
April 3. Eichmond fell. 
April 9. Surrendered to Grant at Appo- 
mattox Court-house. 



xviii CHEOlSrOLOGY 

1865 {continued) 
April 10. Issued Lis Farewell Address to 
the Army of Northern Yirglnia. 
June 13. Applied for pardon. 
August 4. Elected President of Washing- 
ton College, Lexington, Ya. (now "Wash- 
ington and Lee University). 

1867 
February 4. Declined to be a candidate 
for governorship of Yirginia. 

1870 
March-April. Yisited Georgia in search 
of health. 

October 12. Eobert E. Lee died at Lex- 
ington. 



ROBERT E. LEE 



ROBERT E. LEE. 

I. 

Robert Edward Lee was the third 
son, by a second marriage, of the cele- 
brated ^'Light-horse Harry '^ Lee, who 
played such a brave part as a cavalry 
leader in the Revolutionary War, but is 
perhaps better remembered for having 
summed up the career of Washington in 
the appropriate though often misquoted 
phrase, ' ' first in war, first in peace, and 
first in the hearts of his fellow-citizens.'^ 
The great Confederate chieftain un- 
doubtedly got much of his military 
genius and fiery energy from his father's 
side; but, in his nobly balanced moral 
and spiritual nature, he seems to have 
taken after his mother, Anne Hill Car- 
ter, who, in her person, represented 
family traditions and i)owers as eminent 
as those of the Lees. We have not time 
to go into the records of these two fami- 
lies, which Lee himself never i)araded. 



2 EGBERT E. LEE 

It must suffice us to know that, after 
ancient and honorable distinction in 
England, men and women bearing the 
names have for two centuries and a half 
illustrated .the annals of Virginia, with 
public virtues and private graces which 
culminate in the character and career of 
the hero whose life will be briefly told 
in these pages. 

That life began on Jan. 19, 1807, in 
the family house of Stratford in West- 
moreland County. In the same county, 
at an estate looking out upon the same 
broad Potomac, the greatest of all Vir- 
ginians and Americans had been born 
seventy-five years before. In 1811, by 
the removal of his father to Alexandria 
in Fairfax County, the young boy, 
whose name will be more and more 
linked with that of Washington as time 
goes on, was brought, as though by a 
propitious fate, into a favored region, 
over which the mature fame of his great 
predecessor presided, and still presides, 



EOBEET E. LEE 3 

like a tutelar genius. It was not admi- 
ration for Washington, the man, or in- 
terest in Washington, the city, from 
which he had withdrawn ten years be- 
fore at the advent of Jefferson to power, 
that induced Colonel Henry Lee to 
change his residence, but the very 
prudent and proper desire to afford his 
eight children greater educational priv- 
ileges. The poetically- minded reader 
will thank him, however, for thus giv- 
ing additional local contact to two great 
careers destined to be linked still more 
closely through a happy marriage ; while 
the reader who craves romance will be 
glad to learn that it was from Alexan- 
dria that the old warrior, who had been 
commissioned by his friend Madison as 
major-general in the army for the in- 
vasion of Canada, sallied forth in July, 
1812, for the succor and supi^ort of an- 
other friend, the Federalist editor Han- 
son. In the latter' s behalf he received 
wounds, at the hands of a Eepublican 



4 EOBEET E. LEE 

mob in Baltimore, that subsequently sent 
him to the West Indies for five years in 
a vain search for health, and to Cum- 
berland Island off the Georgia coast, the 
estate of his dead comrade, General IS'a- 
thaniel Greene, to find release from his 
sufferings far from his home and his 
kindred. These elements of romance in 
the father's life find few counterparts in 
that of the son, just as the strong in- 
herited and transmitted passions of the 
former were kept in splendid subjection 
by the latter;, but the highest glory 
needs no glamour, and the unselfish life 
of a great man, like Lee, epitomizes and 
embodies as much of true glory as finite 
men can attain to. 

Meanwhile, with his father away to 
the South, his brother Carter at Har- 
vard, and his brother Sidney Smith in 
the navy, the young Eobert became 
the nurse and mainstay of his invalid 
mother ; for one of his sisters was an in- 
valid also, and one was still younger 



EGBERT E. LEE 5 

than himself. All accounts go to prove 
that never did any son accept responsi- 
bilities more faithfully or any mother 
receive her son's loving services more 
gratefully and appropriately, with ben- 
edictions and counsels and prayers. 
^^ Robert was always good," his father 
once wrote; and this is the testimony 
of the schoolmaster who trained him in 
mathematics for West Point, and of 
relatives who watched his development 
with pride. The dignity and grace of 
absolute self-poise, and of single-hearted 
devotion to duty, are as characteristic 
of Lee's youth as of that of Milton or 
of Washington ; and in all three cases it 
is inij)Ossible to discover the least trace 
of unpleasant self- consciousness or of 
priggishness. And with Lee, as with 
Washington, it was maternal devotion 
that best seconded Nature in her task of 
preparing for the world a rounded man. 
His choice of a military career was 
probably determined for Lee by in- 



6 EGBERT E. LEE 

herited capacities ; but perhai)s, as some 
biographers have suggested, he wished 
also to relieve his mother of the charge 
of supporting him. Doubtless he would 
have succeeded equally well in the min- 
istry ; for his mere presence was from 
his earliest youth a reproof to vice, as we 
learn from the story of a dissipated host 
of his, who came to his young guest's 
room, without a word said by the latter, 
and confessed his faults and j)romised 
amendment. Milton, at Cambridge, was 
just such an apostle of purity ; but pre- 
cisely as we are glad that Milton partly, 
at least, abandoned theology for poetry, 
so we are glad that Lee illustrated the 
Christian virtues in the camp and on the 
battlefield instead of in the pulpit. He 
began to illustrate them, amid somewhat 
alien surroundings, immediately upon 
his entrance to West Point in 1825, on 
an appointment secured for him by Gen- 
eral Andrew Jackson, on whom he had 
made a good impression. He received 



EGBERT E. LEE 7 

not a single demerit, was punctilious in 
performing his soldierly duties, con- 
tracted not a vice or even an unsavory 
habit, and finally gave proof of his dili- 
gence and of the clearness and strength 
of his mind by graduating, after a four 
years' course, with the second highest 
honors of his class. He was at once ap- 
pointed second lieutenant of engineers, 
and hastened home to his mother, who 
was permitted just to smile upon him 
before she died. 

Two years later another woman came 
permanently into Lee's life to make it 
blessed in the highest sense of the word. 
During his boyhood he had visited, at 
Arlington, the beautiful Potomac home 
of Mr. Washington Parke Custis, and 
had been attracted by that gentleman's 
surviving daughter, Mary Randolph. 
This grand- daughter of Washington's 
wife seems to have been a lovely and 
fine woman, as well as a great heiress. 
Moreover^ she knew how to recognize 



8 EGBERT E. LEE 

noble qualities in a man, which lovely 
and fine women have not always done. 
Lee in his cadet uniform had looked 
handsome enough, and had pleased 
young and old alike, when during his 
vacations he had gone from one Vir- 
ginia house to another, as was the fash- 
ion in those hospitable days; but he 
must have been specially attractive, as 
a tall, manly officer, when he took a 
holiday from his engineering work on 
the fortifications at Hampton Eoads, in 
order to visit Arlington and its young 
mistress. In due time (June, 1831) 
the courtship ended in one of those 
delightful, old-fashioned country wed- 
dings of which the few survivors love to 
tell. We can still read the names of 
the bridesmaids and groomsmen, if we 
have a mind to ; we can imagine the 
hilarity of the well-cared-for slaves; 
we can smile at the picture presented 
by the tall parson, who, drenched in a 
shower, had been forced to don habili- 



EOBEET E. LEE 9 

nents originally cut to the measure of 
liort Mr. Custis , we can wish that some 
^irginian poet had outstripped Suck- 
ling by making this wedding famous in 
song. But, after all, the best thing we 
can do is to remember that no purer 
marriage was ever made, and that noth- 
ing but happiness flowed from it. 

The honeymoon seems to have been 
spent at Arlington, and must have given 
Lee occasion to ponder, in his serious 
way, over the responsibilities resting 
upon the owner of many slaves. Neither 
he nor his father-in-law believed in the 
institution which was just beginning to 
array its warm partisans and violent 
opponents. Indeed, Mr. Custis manu- 
mitted his negroes ; and Lee, as executor, 
carried out the provisions of his will, 
although the War for the Union was 
raging at the time. So long, however, 
as circumstances forced him to be a 
master, the young of&cer was determined 
to be a kind one. There is even a story, 



10 EGBERT E. LEE 

as Professor White reminds us, that he 
took a consumptive coachman of his 
mother's to Georgia, and there had him 
cared for. But Virginia country life 
had its pleasures as well as its respon- 
sibilities ; and, if Lee had been made of 
less strenuous stuff, he would have hesi- 
tated to serve his country three years 
longer in building coast defences, and 
would have settled down at Arlington 
to take his ease. He had loved hunting 
ever since boyhood, when he used to fol- 
low the hounds for hours unfatigued; 
the sights and sounds of Nature were 
dear to him through life ; he could 
have made himself as methodical a 
farmer as Washington ; he thoroughly 
enjoyed social visiting from plantation 
to plantation. In a word, he had in 
him the making of an ideal country 
gentleman ; but he had also something 
more. He loved his profession, and felt 
that it was a noble one ; and he resolved 
to cling to it for his country's sake, al- 



EGBERT E. LEE 11 

though he was too good a man to wish 
for war and the personal distinction he 
might acquire therein. 



II. 

In 1834 Lee was transferred from 
Fortress Monroe to Washington, where 
he acted as assistant to the chief engi- 
neer of the army, with the rank of first 
lieutenant. This enabled him to live 
at Arlington ; but, on days when the 
long horseback ride was impossible, he 
joined a ^^mess'^ containing such emi- 
nent Southerners as William C. Rives, 
Hugh S. Legar^, and Joel R. Poinsett, 
as well as some younger spirits, one 
among whom was destined to obtain a 
rank among Confederate commanders 
second only to his own, Joseph E. John- 
ston. Lee was probably not the gayest 
or most talkative of the company, al- 
though there is plenty of evidence that 
he enjoyed a joke, and could tell one 
on occasion ; but at least he was never 
known to speak ill of any one, and he 
was not too sedate to invite a comrade 
to mount behind him and ride double 
down Pennsylvania Avenue. 



ROBEET E. LEE 13 

After three years of such uneventful 
life, he was ordered West to superintend 
the proposed improvement of the Upper 
Mississippi for the purposes of navi- 
gation. At St. Louis the river was 
threatening to leave the city high and 
dry, while inundating the Illinois shore. 
There was also work to be done at the 
mouth of the Des Moines River and else- 
where. After a long trip, via the Ohio, 
and a steamer wreck at the Des Moines 
rapids, Lee and his party made their 
surveys, and then prepared their maps 
and plans in a St. Louis warehouse. 
Lee did this sort of work admirably, for 
he was neatness and accuracy personi- 
fied, and looked for a strict observance 
of orders in others. Congress approved 
the St. Louis report subsequently sub- 
mitted ; and the accomplished engineer, 
who was made captain in 1838, was 
kept at his important task until he was 
able to show his captious local critics 
that his plan of forcing ^Hhe current 



14 EGBERT E. LEE 

back into its original channel, by driv- 
ing piles and constructing cribs and 
wing-dams," would afford the city the 
relief it needed. His method of proced- 
ure seems to have been more or less 
original, and to have been the result of 
much hard study. We are more inter- 
ested, however, in the familiar letters 
written home, which give glimpses of 
the growth of a strong, fine character. 
The testimony of comrades, also, is not 
wanting to strengthen our impression 
that few people could have met Lee at 
the beginning of his prime without 
being struck by his manly beauty, his 
genial but dignified nature, his mental 
breadth and balance, and his unobtru- 
sive but always conspicuous Christian 
character. 

Between his Western service and the 
outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, 
Captain Lee's life was singularly free 
from incident, if his chief biographers 
may be trusted. He seems to have been 



ROBERT E. LEE 15 

offered in 1839 an instructorship at West 
Point, which with his usual and, it 
must be confessed, over-scrupulous mod- 
esty he declined. Two years later he 
was put in charge of the defences of New 
York Harbor, and remained at Fort 
Hamilton until his services were re- 
quired in the field. Perhaps the un- 
eventfulness of his life is suflficiently 
explained by the fact that he was con- 
tinuously busy, not merely with his 
engineering work, but with his military 
studies. He must have been studying 
the campaigns of great commanders, and 
become infused with the martial spirit ; 
for we find him, upon the eve of the war 
with Mexico, longing to enter some more 
active branch of the service, preferably 
the artillery. Meanwhile family life 
was most pleasant to him, and he proved 
himself an excellent father to his seven 
children. 

His views with regard to the just or 
unjust character of the Mexican War 



16 ROBERT E. LEE 

are not easily determined. He did, in- 
deed, declare that the United States had 
bullied the weaker nation, and that he 
was ashamed of the fact ; but his natural 
exultation at the great success of the 
American arms, to which he had con- 
tributed most signally, was able to make 
him put such thoughts in the back- 
ground, and there is evidence that he 
had a soldier^ s impatience at diplomatic 
slowness, and wished a just portion of the 
conquered territory to be taken at once. 
As questions of public policy were being 
freely discussed at the time, this com- 
parative silence of Lee's is of interest as 
throwing light upon his subsequent con- 
duct. It is clear that, although, as we 
shall see later, he was not incapable of 
forming intelligent opinions upon such 
matters, he was disposed to preserve a 
military aloofness from politics. This 
fact partly explains his subsequent adhe- 
sion to the Confederacy, and his unwill- 
ness to press his own views upon the 
government of President Davis. 



ROBERT E. LEE 17 

Be this as it may, it is quite clear that 
of all the young officers, whether from 
the North or the South, to whom the 
Mexican War gave the baptism of fire, 
the most distinguished, whether for indi- 
vidual feats of bravery or for important 
military services, was Captain Robert E. 
Lee. At the outbreak of hostilities he 
was attached to General "Wool's com- 
mand in the northern departments. His 
chief exploit at this stage of his career 
gives evidence of the fearlessness and 
thoroughness of his scouting qualities, — 
qualities which he afterward used often 
to put into practice, even when he was 
commanding large armies. General 
Wool, just before the battle of Buena 
Yista, wished to know whether it was 
true that Santa Anna and his army were 
encamped within twenty miles, as had 
been reported. Lee volunteered to find 
out, and started off with a Mexican guide 
to meet his cavalry escort. He missed 
these in some way, and soon found him- 



18 BOBEET E. LEE 

self several miles beyond the American 
lines. Threatening his gnide with death, 
should he prove treacherous, Lee rode 
on until he came to signs that seemed to 
have been made by the enemy. He 
must have fuller information, however, 
and, in spite of his guide's terrors, per- 
sisted in searching for Santa Anna's 
picket-posts. Further and further he 
pressed, until he came upon what ap- 
peared to be a large encampment. Even 
now he would not turn back, but pene- 
trated to within ear-shot, and then vent- 
ured into moonlight clear enough to 
assure him that the apparent encamp- 
ment was a flock of sheep ! The drovers 
informed him that Santa Anna had not 
yet crossed the mountains, and he gal- 
loped back twenty miles with the impor- 
tant news. After three hours' rest he 
led some cavalrymen over his former 
route until he actually reached the out- 
posts of the enemy's army. If he could 
always have gathered his information 



EGBERT E. LEE 19 

in the War for the Union in this thor- 
ough manner, more than one important 
campaign might have had a more pros- 
perous ending. 

In the beginning of 1847, Lee joined 
the staff of General Winfield Scott before 
Vera Cruz, at the personal request of that 
commander. The high-strung old sol- 
dier knew his man, and declared later 
that Lee was ^Hhe greatest military 
genius in America." The latter cer- 
tainly gave his chief every reason to 
form such an opinion, when Scott's 
ebullient nature is taken into account. 
He began by arranging the batteries, 
which reduced the town within a week ; 
and amid the incessant firing he had 
time to pray for the safety of his brother, 
Sidney Smith of the navy, who was in 
charge of one of the guns. His ac- 
tivity secured him favorable mention, 
which became even more complimentary 
after his skilful reconnoissances amid the 
mountain spurs had rendered possible 



20 EGBERT E. LEE 

the storming of the heights of Oerro 
Gordo and the rout of Santa Anna's 
army. There is a touch of generous en- 
thusiasm in General Scott's praise of his 
subordinate's usefulness, and of his gal- 
lantry * ' in conducting columns to their 
stations under the heavy fire of the en- 
emy." There is also a touch of impetu- 
ous rashness in the story that Lee, while 
scouting, pushed too near the enemy, 
and was forced to lie in concealment all 
night beneath a fallen tree, on which 
more than one Mexican sat down to rest. 
In his after career, this spirit of battle 
intoxication led Lee too far, just as it 
did Washington ; but it increased the 
love of his soldiers for him, and it lends 
an attractive human flush to his fame. 
The human note is conspicuous also in 
the affectionate letters he was sending 
home to his wife and children, of whom 
he was thinking ^^ Avhen the musket- balls 
and grape were whistling over his head 
in a perfect shower ' ' ; and his tender 



EGBERT E. LEE 21 

heart comes out in his descriptions of 
the horrors of war, and of the relief with 
which he turns to the natural beauties of 
the country around him. It may be 
well to note here that Lee's love of 
external nature, as evidenced by his 
letters, was as characteristic of him as 
his love of children. His love of ani- 
mals was also marked. On one occasion 
near Petersburg, after having warned 
back some soldiers who had ventured 
into danger on account of their enthusi- 
asm for him, he exposed himself to the 
enemy's fire, in order to replace an un- 
fledged sparrow in its nest. 

By August Scott was ready to advance 
upon the City of Mexico, and by the 19th 
his headquarters were at San Augustin. 
Reconnoissance of the causeways leading 
to the capital had to be made ; and Lee 
and an of&cer, afterward famous as Gen- 
eral Beauregard, were sent across a 
broken field of volcanic rock, known as 
the Pedrigal, to explore the situation of 



22 EGBERT E. LEE 

Contreras. Having surveyed the rough 
ground, Lee set a pioneer corps to mak- 
ing a road, over which in a few hours 
he guided the divisions of Pillow and 
Twiggs. He accompanied the latter 
force in its attack upon General Valen- 
cia's intrenchments at the edge of the 
lava field. Darkness having checked a 
flank movement, it was deemed best to 
await re-enforcements ; and Lee under- 
took to report to General Scott the plan 
of attack he had himself suggested to a 
council of of&cers. Unattended, amid 
thick gloom and driving rain, he set out 
over the fissured lava, and by midnight 
reached San Augustin, and reported to 
his commander. Scott was so impressed 
by his courage and endurance that he 
afterward declared that in that midnight 
journey Lee had done *^the greatest 
feat of physical and moral courage per- 
formed by any individual,'' to his knowl- 
edge, during the campaign. Not content 
with this signal exploit, Lee guided re- 



EGBERT E. LEE 23 

enforcements before dawn to the seat 
of operations, and thus secured from 
Scott the chief credit for the brilliant 
victory of Contreras that ensued. 

The Mexicans were now concentrated 
at the village of Churubusco j and, in the 
assault that followed, Lee rendered good 
service by urging forward a howitzer 
battery to the support of the brigades of 
Pierce and Shields, and by reporting to 
Scott the movements of the enemy's 
cavalry. The victory of Molino-del-Eey 
followed on September 8. Then came the 
brilliant charge up the steeps of Chapul- 
tepec, which had been advised by Beau- 
regard, Lee dissenting. On this day of 
hot firing, in which Joseph E. Johnston, 
George B. McClellan, George E. Pickett, 
and Thomas J. Jackson distinguished 
themselves, Lee as chief aide carried 
Scott's orders to and fro ^^ until he 
fainted from a wound and the loss of 
two nights' sleep at the batteries." He 
had already been bre vetted major after 



24 EOBEET E. LEE 

Cerro Gordo and lieutenant colonel after 
Churubusco. Now he won the brevet 
rank of colonel. His wound did not 
keep him out of the race for the capital, 
and he had his part in the triumphal 
entry of Sept. 14, 1847. 

In the lull that followed, Lee had 
plenty of work to do in connection with 
surveys and drawings of the city. He 
was so busy that he could not be dragged 
to a banquet to answer to a toast to him- 
self, but he found time to write very 
genial letters home and to make visits 
to churches and interesting spots in the 
vicinity. He did not join in any exu- 
berant celebration of his country's vic- 
tories ; but his comrades, as we have just 
seen, remembered him, and the com- 
manders, from Scott down, wrote and 
spoke highly in his praise. His desires 
for active and successful service had 
been amply fulfilled ; and, if he had had 
any personal vanity, he might have been 
pleased to learn that competent judges 



EOBEKT E. LEE 25 

coiisidered him the handsomest man in 
the army. A photograph taken in 1852 
makes one feel that this was not a mis- 
taken judgment j but it is best to let 
one's mind dwell on the soldier's daring 
and the man's quiet virtues, and on the 
fact that he had received just the sort 
of training in subordinate positions that 
would fit him to be a great leader when 
the time should come. His bursting into 
tears when he saw how Joe Johnston 
had been affected by the loss of a dear 
relative, and his efforts to patch up the 
differences between Scott and his sub- 
ordinates, were indicative of qualities 
that would not interfere with this train- 
ing, but would rather tend to make him 
the most gentle and considerate and 
best beloved of all the great captains. 

The war over, Lee was placed in 
charge of the defences then constructing 
at Baltimore. While in this employ- 
ment, he was tendered the leadership of 
a Cuban insurrection by a junta in New 



26 EGBERT E. LEE 

York, but declined it, as Mr. Jefferson 
Davis has informed us, on account of his 
duty to his own country to continue in 
her service. Perhaps by going he might 
have averted a subsequent war, and 
been brought to the front more quickly 
in the War for the Union, with results 
that cannot well be calculated. Such 
speculations are idle 5 but it is well to 
notice the delicate conscience with re- 
gard to the national government, as well 
as the always preponderant modesty 
with which he sought to decline his 
appointment in 1852 to the superintend- 
ency of the academy at West Point. 
His superiors would not hear of his de- 
clination, and he showed that they were 
right by improving the discipline and 
lengthening the course of study to five 
years. In 1855, it is needless to say 
without any self-seeking on his part, he 
was promoted lieutenant colonel of the 
Second Cavalry, which necessitated his 
leaving the academy where he had had 



EOBEET E, LEE 27 

the pleasure of seeing his son Custis, 
afterward a Confederate general and 
president of Washington and Lee Uni- 
versity, graduate at the head of his 
class. 

Lee^s new position had been secured 
to him through the increase of the army, 
due to the acquisition of territory from 
Mexico and to the repeated Indian upris- 
ings. After being recruited at Jefferson 
Barracks, the Second Cavalry, under 
Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, pro- 
ceeded to Western Texas, where Lee 
joined them in March, 1856. He took 
firm charge of the parleyings with Ca- 
tumseh, a troublesome chief, and pursued 
his bands, consoling himself for the mo- 
notony of his ordinary camp life by his 
study of the flora and fauna of the in- 
teresting region. He also kept close 
to his family by means of tender 
letters, and to his God by solitary 
services in his tent. On Easter Day, 
1857, he seems specially to have felt his 



28 EOBEET E. LEE 

loneliness. In July the command of the 
regiment devolved upon him, Johnston 
being called to Washington ; and three 
months later he himself was summoned 
home on account of the death of his 
father-in-law, Mr. Custis. In due time 
he returned, and continued his command 
until the autumn of 1859, when he ob- 
tained leave to visit his family. 

During this visit the famous John 
Brown raid occurred, and the govern- 
ment at once ordered Lee from Arling- 
ton to the seat of the disturbance. He 
reached Harper's Ferry with a company 
of marines on October 19, and forthwith 
informed himself of the situation. He 
posted his soldiers in the armory, defer- 
ring an attack on Brown and his men 
until morning, because he had learned 
that they had taken citizen hostages 
with them into the engine-house. The 
next day at sunrise a party of marines 
broke in, and secured the insurgents and 
the prisoners, none of the hostages being 



EOBEET E. LEE 29 

hurt, but all save four of the lawbreak- 
ers being killed or mortally wounded. 
Brown bad previously refused a propo- 
sition to surrender, offering terms on his 
part which Lee could not have taken, 
regarding the old man and his followers, 
as he naturally did, as flagrant offenders 
against the peace of the Commonwealth 
of Virginia. Lee could and did, how- 
ever, protect his prisoners against would 
be lynchers, and, after kindly treatment, 
duly handed them over to the civil 
authorities. His diary of the affair 
shows that he regarded it, as nearly all 
Southerners did then and have done 
since, from a social and political point 
of view, and not at all from a dramatic 
— least of all from a sentimental — one. 
He could not, however, have relished 
his task ; and we can afford to hurry on. 
His period of rest was broken early 
in 1860 by a call to Eichmond to advise 
the legislature with regard to organizing 
the militia in view of future invasions. 



30 EOBEET E. LEE 

and a month later lie was ordered to 
take command of tlie Department of 
Texas. Letters, which will be again 
referred to, show that the rapidly wid- 
ening breach between the sections was 
filling much of his thoughts during his 
last year of service in the army of the 
TJnited States ; b'at he also had occupa- 
tion in securing forage and in pursuing 
a troublesome bandit named Cortinas. 
Several months were passed in San An- 
tonio, where he took interest in the 
building of an Episcopal church ; but, 
when all is said, it seems a most un- 
eventful twelvemonth for a great hero 
to spend, before Providence would per- 
mit him fairly to enter upon his mighty 
life-work. But at last, with the seces- 
sion of Texas, his recall to Washington 
came in February, 1861 ; and, after a 
short passage through the Valley of the 
Shadow, he emerged upon the sunlit 
plains of the heroic epoch of his life. 



III. 

It would be superfluous to attempt 
to enter here upon any discussion of the 
causes that led to the formation of the 
Southern Confederacy and to the conse- 
quent War for the Union. It must be 
clearly understood, however, that the 
compact theory of the origin of the 
Union was almost universally held 
throughout the South, and had been 
so held since 1789, as indeed it had 
been partly held by New England in 
1812. In view of this theory the right 
of a State to withdraw from the Union 
for good cause was maintained by al- 
most every Southerner, and a feeling 
had been growing for many years that 
the attitude of the people of the North 
toward the institution of slavery con- 
stituted such a cause. Abolitionist agi- 
tation during the thirties, divided policy 
with regard to the Mexican War during 
the forties, the squabble over the newly 



32 EGBERT E. LEE 

acquired territory and the Fugitive Slave 
Law in the fifties, had brought extremists 
to the front in both sections, and had 
made the Presidential election of 1860 
practically a test vote as to whether 
the time-honored policy of compromise 
should be further tried or a separation 
be resorted to. The election of Mr. 
Lincoln, according to the logic of pas- 
sion which rules in such matters, led by 
inevitable necessity to South Carolina's 
secession in December, 1860. The same 
logic determined the far Southern and 
South-western States to imitate her ex- 
ample, and the Border States to follow 
suit when Mr. Lincoln proposed to 
march his troops through them for the 
crushing of the new Confederacy./" There 
was not a little of the logic of passion 
in the zeal with which the North pre- 
pared to do battle for the cause of 
Union j and the important point to re- 
member is that, while the political the- 
orist must use a different sort of logic. 



EGBERT E. LEE 33 

the impartial historian must give the 
logic of passion its full weight in his 
endeavor to judge men and nations who 
have been actuated by it. It shows an 
almost naive lack of human experience 
to argue — as so many historians, North- 
ern and Southern, do — from the charac- 
ter of a cause viewed in the abstract to 
the character of the passionate flesh- and- 
blood actors therein. Such a proced- 
ure is safe enough in the case of plain 
violations of municipal and moral laws 
that have obtained the sanction of man- 
kind at large, but it is unsafe in almost 
every other case. Hence it follows that 
nearly all the popular judgments passed 
in condemnation upon this or that prom- 
inent actor in the drama of secession will 
have to be revised, in so far as such 
judgments touch the moral character. 
Even in the case of Mr. Jefferson Davis, 
who has in the country at large and in 
the outside world borne much of the 
obloquy of having represented an un- 



34 EOBEET E. LEE 

popular cause, the verdict of history- 
will surely be that he was a thoroughly 
upright, honorable man, who did what 
he conceived to be his duty, and showed, 
on the whole, remarkable powers in the 
performance thereof. 

This, and more than this, the world has 
long been willing to say of General Rob- 
ert E. Lee ; but, while Lee's noble genius 
and character lift him, by quite unani- 
mous consent above all other Confeder- 
ates, it cannot be forgotten that he 
would never have been willing to be 
judged apart from the men who fought 
and labored for the cause that was 
dear to him, or that in the last analysis 
there is no real reason for exempting 
him from any moral condemnation 
meted out to a man like Mr. Davis. It 
is true that Lee as we shall soon learn, 
did not believe in secession or in slav- 
ery, — he had freed his own negroes, — 
that he had no share in bringing on 
the war, and that he cannot be charged, 



ROBERT E. LEE 35 

as Mr. Davis and other Southern leaders 
have been, with bad statesmanship, which, 
be it remembered, is not bad morals j but 
it is equally true that he did not be- 
lieve in the general government's right 
to invade and coerce the Southern States, 
that he thought the South aggrieved, and 
that he accepted the situation in which 
he found himself, and joined his people 
with his eyes open. If secession, under 
the prevalence of the compact theory 
and the conviction that his right to his 
slave property was imperilled, casts a 
moral stain upon any Southerner, it 
must cast it upon Lee, who willingly 
fought to sustain the seceders, though 
he did not accept their arguments fully, 
and was offered an excellent opportunity 
to serve the Union cause. Yet very few 
people have been hardy enough to vent- 
ure even to hint that there is any stain 
upon the escutcheon of the great soldier 
who led the heroic Army of Northern 
Virginia to victory after victory. 



36 EGBERT E. LEE 

Our conclusion is obvious. In this 
and in all other matters not settled by ^ 
the consensus of civilized opinion or the 
arbitrament of arms — neither of which 
methods of solution had operated by 
1861 with regard to secession, or indeed 
completely with regard to slavery — it is 
idle to judge men's moral characters 
according to our estimate of the cause 
they serve. We must judge them as 
men, in accordance with the totality of 
our knowledge concerning their lives. 
Judged by this standard, we shall find 
no purer life ever lived than that of 
Robert Lee, no matter whether or not 
we believe secession to have been justi- 
fiable from the point of view of history, 
or deny the right of a man to let his 
sentiments get the better of his reason. 

"We left Lee recalled to Washington 
in February, 1861. He reached Ar- 
lington on March 1, in a frame of mind 
more easily guessed at than described. 
In his letters home he had for some time 



EGBERT E. LEE 37 

been giving his views of the perilous 
political situation. He did not love the 
Puritanism of New England any more 
than most Southerners then did; but, 
being charitable and discreet, he did not 
vent his opinions in harsh words. He 
believed that the South had been ag- 
grieved by the acts of the North, and in 
this belief wrote as follows to his son, 
whose political views he refrained from 
tampering with : — 

^^I feel the aggression, and am witt- 
ing to take every proper step for re- 
dress. It is the principle I contend for, 
not individual or private benefit. As 
an American citizen, I take great pride 
in my country, her prosperity and her 
institutions, and would defend any State 
if her rights were invaded. But I can 
anticipate no greater calamity for my 
country than a dissolution of the Union. 
It would be an accumulation of all the 
evils we complain of, and I am willing 
to sacrifice everything but honor for its 



38 EOBEET E. LEE 

preservation. I hope, therefore, that all 
constitutional means will be exhausted 
before there is a resort to force. Seces- 
sion is nothing but revolution. The 
framers of our Constitution never ex- 
hausted so much labor, wisdom, and 
forbearance in its formation, and sur- 
rounded it with so many guards and 
securities, if it was intended to be 
broken by every member of the Con- 
federacy at will. . . . Still, a Union 
that can only be maintained by swords 
and bayonets, and in which strife and 
civil war are to take the place of 
brotherly love and kindness, has no 
charm for me. I shall mourn for my 
country and for the welfare and prog- 
ress of mankind. If the Union is dis- 
solved and the government disrupted, 
I shall return to my native State and 
share the miseries of my people, and, 
save in defence, will draw my sword on 
none.'^ 
The spirit animating this letter is ob- 



EOBEET E. LEE 39 

viously beyond praise. Lee could not 
have had a touch of the ^^ fire-eater ^^ 
about him, which is one reason why his 
memory is endeared to so many people 
in the North ; though, for the matter of 
that, Mr. Davis was not an ultra- violent 
man, either, and was chosen President 
of the Confederacy on account of his 
moderation. Nor did Lee believe in 
the right of secession, which seems to 
argue his possession of a clearer head for 
political questions than Mr. Davis and 
many another Southern leader had at 
that juncture. But, although Lee was in 
the right according to the logic of ab- 
stract political reasoning, and although 
he was as little likely to be swayed by 
the logic of passion as any man that 
ever lived, there was another logic 
which, as this letter and the whole 
course of his life prove, he could 
not resist, — the logic of sympathy. He 
loved his fellow- Southerners, the people 
among whom he had been born and 



40 EGBERT E. LEE 

with whom he had lived for much of his 
life, the people with whom his dearest 
interests of family and friendship were 
bound up. He might deplore the po- 
litical actions of these people ; but he 
believed they had been wronged, — a 
natural enough belief, considering the 
trend of public opinion about him, — 
and, in the final test he must stand or 
fall with them. And, in the last analy- 
sis, he was a States-rights man ; for he 
'^ would defend any State if her rights 
were invaded,'^ much more his mother 
State, Virginia. 

But why, it may be and has been 
asked, did not Lee act as two other 
Virginians — Winfield Scott and George 
H. Thomas — acted, and uphold the gov- 
ernment he had sworn to defend? With- 
out criticising the motives of these two 
distinguished soldiers, we may reply by 
maintaining that they were not men of 
the stamp of Lee, — they were not men 
likely to be greatly influenced by the 



ROBERT E. LEE 41 

logic of sympathy. Their motives in 
clinging to the Union had probably 
the moral level consonant with their 
general characters : Lee^s motives in sur- 
rendering his commission and siding with 
his State had also the moral level conso- 
nant with his general character. It 
takes little psychological insight, how- 
ever, to perceive that, eminent as Scott 
and Thomas were, they were not men of 
the same splendid moral and spiritual 
class with Lee, whose utterances some- 
times have the ring of a great moralist, 
like Epictetus.* Hence, when General 
Garfield in his eulogy on Thomas, in com- 
paring Lee with the latter, confidently 
appealed ^^from the Virginia of to-day 
to the Virginia of the future ' ' to reverse 
her judgment passed upon the respective 
merits of her two great sons, he was 

*Cf., for example, these words from the fine letter of 
March 6, 1864, apropos of the Dahlgren prisoners: "I 
think it better to do right, even if we suffer in so doing, 
than to incur the reproach of our consciences and pos- 
terity." 



42 EOBEET E. LEE 

more eloquent than wise. Virginia's 
verdict will never be reversed, because 
her sons — even the few who, like the 
present writer, have little sympathy with 
the political ideals of the generation just 
gone — have taken Lee to their hearts as 
a peerless exemplar of all that is honor- 
able and pure and exquisite and noble 
in human life and character. They have 
never put General Scott or General 
Thomas, however much they may re- 
spect and admire them, in any such 
category ; and, should they ever do it, it 
would be a clear sign that the Mother of 
Presidents, or perhaps here we should 
say of generals, is in her intellectual 
dotage. 

Returning now to Lee's outward life, 
we may be very sure that President 
Lincoln had no more anxious watcher 
during the first few weeks of his trying 
administration than the quiet soldier at 
Arlington. Whether Lee at that time 
understood Lincoln's intentions fully or 






BOBEET E. LEE 43 

at all gauged his powers may be doubted, 
but we have evidence that the President 
through General Scott had formed a high 
opinion of Lee. On April 18, Mr. F. P. 
Blair, at the suggestion of the Executive, 
visited Colonel Lee, and offered him the 
command of the army destined for the 
subjugation of the Confederacy. There 
can be no question as to the substantial 
accuracy of this statement ; for Lee^s 
famous letter of Feb. 25, 1868, to Mr. 
Reverdy Johnson is too explicit on the 
point to leave room for any denials. 
Lee's word is unassailable, and his clear 
mind and innate modesty forbid us to 
believe that he misunderstood the pur- 
port of Mr. Blair's visit. Besides, in 
view of General Scott's high opinion of 
him, and of the fact that he had not 
been in haste to resign his commission, 
there was every reason why the offer 
should have been made him. But it 
came in vain. ^' After listening to his 
remarks," wrote Lee to Mr. Johnson, 



44 EGBERT E. LEE 

^^I declined the offer lie made me to 
take command of the army that was to 
be brought into the field, stating, as 
candidly and courageously as I could, 
that, though opposed to secession and 
deprecating war, I could take no part in 
an invasion of the Southern States.'^ 

It was a great renunciation, for Lee 
had no illusions as to the power of the 
Union and the weakness of the Confed- 
eracy ; and he loved his united country 
and the army which, instead of leaving, 
by a twist of his conscience, he might 
have commanded. That conscience 
however, was not made to be twisted j 
and he quietly put his temptation be- 
hind him. Then he went to General 
Scott, and told him of his decision in 
what must have been, considering their 
relations, a still more trying interview. 
It has indeed been claimed that Scott 
had sent for Lee, in order to get him 
to declare himself on one side or the 
other. This maj^ or may not be true, 



ROBERT E. LEE 45 

but any effort to represent Lee as vacil- 
lating is idle. He was merely waiting 
for an overt act of invasion, — waiting 
in a sort of dread calm. It is equally 
idle to argue that, because lie sent in 
his resignation from the recently ac- 
quired colonelcy of the First Cavalry 
on the 20th of April in a most touching 
letter to Scott, and on the 22d went to 
Richmond to receive on the following 
day the command of the military forces 
of Virginia, he acted with an easy con- 
science. Between the 18th, the date of 
the interviews with Blair and Scott, and 
the 20th, the date of Lee's resignation, 
acts amounting in the latter' s opinion, 
as we learn from a letter to his brother 
Sidney Smith, to a beginning of hostil- 
ities had actually taken place. The 
President had declared a blockade of 
Southern ports, a Massachusetts regi- 
ment had entered Maryland, Pennsyl- 
vania troops were guarding Washing- 
ton. To Lee this meant the invasion 



46 ROBERT E. LEE 

against which he intended to fight, and 
on this view of the matter it would have 
been absurd for him to wait to hear of 
the fate of his resignation. For aught 
he knew, Scott might arrest him; yet 
gentlemen have been known to argue, 
seemingly, that he should have waited 
for this consummation. It would be as 
near the truth to argue that the man 
who had written those touching letters 
of April 20 to Scott and to his sister, 
Mrs. Marshall of Baltimore, who, al- 
though her husband was a Union man 
and her son fought for ^the I^Torth, was 
fully persuaded that no one could 
^^whip Robert" — letters breathing the 
tenderest regret at the step he was tak- 
ing, — was seduced by the bauble of a 
major - generalship in the Virginian 
army, and was in unbecoming haste to 
rush to Richmond and get it. 

Get it he did, but in the most dignified 
way. On April 23 he was introduced 
to the Virginia convention, and was ad- 



EGBERT E. LEE 47 

dressed by its President in fitting terms. 
His own reply was worthy of Washing- 
ton, and must be given entire : — 

^^Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 
Convention, — Deeply impressed with the 
solemnity of the occasion on which I 
appear before you, and profoundly 
grateful for the honor conferred upon 
me, I accept the position your partiality 
has assigned me, though I would greatly 
have preferred that your choice should 
have fallen on one more capable. Trust- 
ing to Almighty God, an approving con- 
science, and the aid of my fellow- citizens, 
I will devote myself to the defence and 
service of my native State, in whose be- 
half alone would I have ever drawn my 
sword. ' ' 

If ever words bore the accents of high 
truth and holy purpose, these words bear 
them. It is no wonder that the conven- 
tion heard them with delight, and that 
the eyes of all were fastened with pleas- 
ure and wonder upon the stalwart, manly 



48 EGBERT E. LEE 

soldier that uttered them. Alexander 
H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Con- 
federacy, witnessed the ceremony, and 
was so struck by the hold Lee had upon 
his fellow-citizens that he feared that, 
unless the new general should be willing 
to run the risk of losing his rank in 
the forces of the Confederacy, it would 
be difficult to get Virginia to join the 
former. An interview with the modest 
ofi&cer soon convinced him, however, 
that in Lee^s mind place and power 
were always subordinate to duty, — a 
word which he once declared to be the 
sublimest in the language. On May 25 
Lee ceased to be Virginia's major-gen- 
eral, and became a Confederate briga- 
dier, no higher title having been yet 
created in the Southern service. He 
had filled the interim by endeavoring 
to organize troops and arm them, en- 
countering and subduing in these labors 
far greater difficulties than were ever 
presented to him by his ambition. 



IV. 

Lee found Virginia totally unpre- 
pared for the conflict at hand. Volun- 
teers in large numbers were forthcoming, 
but there was a woful lack of arms. 
Fowling-pieces and rifles had to be used, 
and the cavalry were at first supplied 
with roughly made lances instead of 
sabres. The condition of the entire 
South in this respect was almost as bad, 
as we learn from the report of the chief 
of ordnance, General Josiah Gorgas. 
Powder especially was lacking in the 
arsenals, practically only two small 
stores, relics of the Mexican War, being 
accessible. Yet both Gorgas and Lee 
triumphed over their difficulties j and by 
the end of May, by working steadily 
and with great patience at his office in 
Eichmond, the latter, in the words of his 
chief biographer. General Long, ^^had 
organized, equipped, and sent to the field 
more than thirty thousand men, and 



50 BOBERT E. LEE 

various regiments were in a forward state 
of preparation.'' At this time Lee was 
acting Commander-in-chief of the Confed- 
eracy. When President Davis, after the 
removal of the capital from Montgomery 
to Bichmond, took charge of all military 
movements on June 8, the Virginian 
general remained by his side as a con- 
stant and trusted adviser. This was 
particularly desirable, not only on ac- 
count of Lee's success as an organizer, 
but because of his knowledge of the to- 
pography of his State, which was evi- 
dently destined to become the theatre 
of the first operations of the Union 
forces. Though he chafed at not being 
able to take the field, he gave no one an 
opportunity to say that he was not will- 
ing to do the duty that lay plainly be- 
fore him. 

Against the long defensive line of the 
Confederacy which stretched from the 
swamps of the seaboard to the Allegha- 
nies, the authorities at Washington, after 



EGBERT E. LEE 51 

some hesitation, directed two main move- 
ments, — one southward toward Rich- 
mond under General McDowell, the other 
under General George B. McClellan 
against the forces of Generals Garnett 
and Wise, gathered in the mountains of 
what is now West Virginia. President 
Davis gave his attention to the first 
movement. General Lee to the second. 
The latter had in many ways the 
harder task. Garnett was soon de- 
feated and killed, McClellan being 
left master of North-western Virginia. 
Re-enforcements were hurried to the 
Confederates, and General Loring was 
sent to take command. Meanwhile the 
defeat of Manassas on July 21 had 
caused McClellan' s transference, with a 
considerable portion of his troops, to the 
Army of the Potomac, and had infused 
an unwarranted confidence into the en- 
tire Southern people. Even the calm 
Lee, although not dazed, was greatly 
delighted, and wrote his congratulations 



52 ROBEET E. LEE 

to Beauregard and Joe Johnston with- 
out a trace of envy at their good fort- 
une. But McClellan's early success 
had seriously weakened the Confederate 
chances of holding to the Southern 
cause the mountain people, who had no 
sympathy with slavery ; and the Con- 
federate forces in the region were small, 
and ineffectively handled by generals 
who in two cases, at least, were aspiring 
politicians. Under these circumstances 
it seemed best to send Lee to command 
in West Virginia, where he arrived 
early in August. He must have fore- 
seen the difficulties of the campaign, 
though hardly its ultimate failure. 

There is no need to describe in detail 
the vexatious weeks that followed. The 
two rival political brigadiers were tact- 
fully treated, but in vain ; for Lee, 
uncertain of the administration at Rich- 
mond, did not assert his authority to 
the full. Being the gentle, considerate 
man he was, he could hardly have acted 



ROBERT E. LEE 53 

otherwise ; but one feels that Washing- 
ton would have been more strenuous, and 
one discovers here the single weak point 
in Lee's character as a soldier, but per- 
haps the chief cause of his charm, — nay, 
his glory as a man. He could not be 
harsh ; and so he let time slip away, ac- 
cepting Loring's excuse that he was un- 
prepared to move his troops for lack of 
wagons. Then incessant rains came on, 
the ordinary difficulties of the region 
were vastly increased, and sickness of all 
sorts more than decimated the troops. 
Lee wrote his wife on Sept. 26, 1861 : 
^^We are without tents, and for two 
nights I have lain buttoned up in my 
overcoat. To-day my tent came up, and 
I am in it ; yet I fear I shall not sleep for 
thinking of the poor men." Still, he 
preserved his courage and his equanim- 
ity, and, remembering his Mexican War 
days, did some most venturesome scout- 
ing. But he could not do everything 
himself, as he learned on September 12, 



54 EOBEET E. LEE 

when he planned to attack the Union 
forces under General Eeynolds at Cheat 
Mountain. His dispositions were well 
conceived 5 but, as so often in his career, 
they were foiled by the failure of a sub- 
ordinate to do his part ; for a certain 
colonel, on account of false reports as 
to the number of the enemy's troops in- 
trenched on the mountain, did not attack 
as ordered. A flanking movement was 
thus rendered impossible, a direct assault 
seemed out of the question, and the total 
operation amounted to nothing. Yet 
Lee had no reproaches for his subor- 
dinate ; and his letter to Governor 
Letcher, describing his own mortifica- 
tion, is a greater tribute to his character 
than any victory would have been. 

With equal fortitude he bore his dis- 
appointment in the subsequent move- 
ments in the Kanawha Valley. The 
political brigadiers were making no 
progress against that ef&cient soldier, 
General Eosecrans j and Lee determined 



EGBERT E. LEE 55 

that his own presence was necessary. 
He arrived on the scene early in October, 
and forced his recalcitrant generals into 
some sort of union, fortifying himself 
strongly on a mountain crest parallel 
with that occupied by Eosecrans, who 
was taking the offensive. His engineer- 
ing skill stood him in such stead that 
the enemy postponed attacking until re- 
enforcements under Loring brought up 
the Confederate forces to about fifteen 
thousand, and made the two armies 
nearly equal. Under these circumstances 
the Union general remained quiet ; while 
Lee, who never liked inaction, deter- 
mined to try a well- devised flank move- 
ment. But Eosecrans slipped away by 
night ; and pursuit, though ordered, was 
soon abandoned. Winter was now at 
hand, when operations, difficult enough 
in summer, would be impossible. There 
was, then, nothing to do but to acknowl- 
edge the campaign a failure. The Con- 
federate government withdrew its troops, 



56 EGBERT E. LEE 

and sent them elsewhere. Lee, whom 
the press abused, and even former 
friends began to regard as overrated, 
was assigned to command the Depart- 
ment of South Carolina, Georgia, and 
Florida 5 and her western counties were 
lost to the Old Dominion forever. It 
must have been a crushing blow to Lee 
at the time, but he bore it uncomplain- 
ingly. His biographer can fortunately 
look at the whole affair in another light. 
Early failure may have taught Lee the 
very lessons which their easy success at 
First Manassas so disastrously failed to 
teach the Southern people. And, when 
all is said, no commander, however 
great, can succeed against bad roads, 
bad weather, sickness of troops, lack of 
judgment and harmony among subordi- 
nates, and a strong, alert enemy. Yet 
this is what Lee was expected to do. 
We at least need not indulge in such 
fatuous criticism, and may instead recall 
the interesting fact that General Lee 



ROBERT E. LEE 57 

bought his famous war-horse, Traveller, 
during this disastrous campaign. Trav- 
eller cuts a much more important figure 
in the eyes of posterity than the news- 
paper critics of 1861. 

Lee's work in his new command was 
to be of a sort familiar to him from past 
experience. It had become apparent 
that, unless the coast defences were 
strengthened, Southern ports would soon 
be effectively blockaded, and Union 
troops landed at many points. But how 
were these defences to be rendered avail- 
able with few troops and poor guns? 
This was Lee's problem ; and with his 
usual courage, and his remarkable ex- 
ecutive resources, he proceeded to solve 
it in a very creditable fashion. A call 
for men was answered by the Carolinians 
and Georgians ; and a blockade runner 
brought him rifles and a few, very few, 
good cannon. Then he made a careful 
study of the coast line, and, abandon- 
ing exposed situations and islands, con- 



58 BOBERT E. LEE 

structed a strong interior line of defences 
against which war-vessels and gunboats 
could do no damage. He concentrated 
his strength at points that could easily 
support one another, laying special 
stress upon the safety of Charleston and 
Savannah. For example, to quote in 
substance. General Long, at Coosawhat- 
chie, where Lee's headquarters were, 
could communicate with either Charles- 
ton or Savannah by railroad in two or 
three hours, while intermediate posi- 
tions could be re-enforced from positions 
contiguous to them. 

The results of these plans, which seem 
as simple as Lee's manners and the tin- 
ware used at the table of his modest 
headquarters, but which were really 
masterly in their grasp of the situation 
and the resources at hand, were soon 
apparent both to the enemy and to the 
great soldier's critics. Many of the de- 
fences erected before he took charge had 
been ineffectual, and points had been 



ROBEET E. LEE 59 

captured iu North Carolina by the Fed- 
eral forces. Late in 1861 Port Royal, a 
most important harbor in South Caro- 
lina, fell an easy victim. The conse- 
quent evacuation of Hilton Head ex- 
posed Savannah, and Charleston was 
also in danger. But the works erected 
by Lee, at various points that need not 
be detailed, soon changed the aspect of 
affairs. Reconnoissances sent out by the 
commanders of the Union fleet were met 
in every direction by frowning batteries. 
The Federals could make comparatively 
little progress, and the spirits of the peo- 
ple of South Carolina and Georgia rose 
accordingly. Both Charleston and Sa- 
vannah were rapidly fortified, with the 
result that they did not fall until the 
close of the war, and that a region ab- 
solutely necessary for the provisioning 
of the Confederate armies was left free 
for cultivation. It would of course be 
unjust to affirm that all this was accom- 
plished by Lee alone; but it is quite 



60 EGBERT E. LEE 

clear that his was the master mind that 
laid down the plans of defence success- 
fully followed, and that his personal 
presence at this and that point of the 
extended line contributed much to the 
rapidity with which it was made effi- 
cient. But in March, 1862, he was re- 
called to Richmond for more needed 
work, not, however, before he had vis- 
ited his father^s grave on Cumberland 
Island. 

His return to his native State meant 
that he was to see his invalid wife once 
more, but under very trying circum- 
stances ; for beautiful Arlington had been 
confiscated, and his family were exiles. 
Even his calm spirit revolted at the fate 
that had befallen the home of his wife 
and children ; and, in his references to 
the matter, he came as near to bitter- 
ness as he could come. His strong tem- 
per rebelled still more at such acts of 
devastation as affected private citizens 
or communities, for his own ideals as 



EOBEET E. LEE 61 

to the proper mode of conducting war 
were of the highest and noblest kind. 
He forbade pillage or destruction of any 
sort, whether he was in the enemy's 
country or not. What he would have 
replied to Sheridan's brutal remarks to 
Bismarck during the Franco -German 
War on the necessity for devastation — 
remarks at which even the man of 
'^ blood and iron" almost winced — is 
not hard to imagine; but he always 
ended by controlling his feelings, and 
by redoubling his energies in order to 
fight like a master of the art — not the 
trade — of war. It was never his habit 
even to refer to his opponents harshly. 
His usual name for them appears in 
a query he once addressed to his sub- 
sequent biographer, — ^^Now, Colonel 
Long, how can we get at those people f^^ 
On one occasion he stated positively 
that he had never seen the day when he 
did not pray for them. 

In Richmond^ Lee settled down to di- 



62 EOBEET E. LEE 

recting all the military operations of 
the Confederacy, under the supervision 
of President Davis, who, being a gradu- 
ate of West Point and a soldier of dis- 
tinction in the Mexican War, was not 
disposed to be a merely nominal com- 
mander-in-chief. It speaks well for 
Lee's serenity of character that he could 
work with so little friction in such a 
situation. Whether he would have ac- 
complished more by a strenuous asser- 
tion of his military genius must always 
remain a matter in doubt, although such 
assertion could only have come later. 
Certain it is, however, that he set dili- 
gently to work to get men and supplies 
in readiness to meet McClellan's ad- 
vance up the Peninsula. Outside of 
Virginia the fall of Eoanoke Island and 
of Forts Henry and Donelson made 
affairs look gloomy ; but, in the pitched 
battles likely to ensue, the victors of 
Manassas found something to look for- 
ward to. 



EOBEET E. LEE 63 

There is no need to describe here 
Stonewall Jackson's movements in the 
Valley of Virginia or the slow advance 
of McClellan toward Eichmond. Lee 
kept in full communication with Jack- 
son, to whom he gave a free hand ; but 
he could not agree with the plan of 
General Joe Johnston, who was to com- 
mand against McClellan, to the effect 
that a stand should be taken in front 
of Eichmond, with an army made equal 
to McClellan' s by the union with the 
troops already assigned to the Penin- 
sula service of all available forces in 
North and South Carolina and Georgia. 
In other words, Johnston wished to risk 
the fortunes of the Confederacy on one 
blow. He proposed to withdraw troops 
from Norfolk, and would of course have 
used the forces near Eichmond. Li 
short, he would have stripped the At- 
lantic coast region bare. It was a dar- 
ing plan, on which Mr. Davis wished to 
get all the light he could. So a council 



C4 EOBEET E. LEE 

was held, in which Johnston unfolded 
his scheme and Lee opposed it. The 
latter objected to weakening South 
Carolina and Georgia, which he had 
just made strong enough to resist at- 
tack ; and he believed that a small 
army could be well handled in the Pen- 
insula. This opinion — which is partly 
to be explained on the score of Lee^s 
own peculiar genius as a strategist, — 
appealed to Mr. Davis, who naturally 
did not wish to abandon l^Torfolk or 
run serious risks elsewhere. John- 
ston's scheme, indeed, strikes one as 
grandiose j but, while it might have led 
to signal victory and to a temporary 
paralysis of Union efforts, there is little 
reason to believe that it would have 
brought immediate peace. Lee would 
probably have been nearer to this con- 
summation, had he won at Gettysburg, 
than Johnston would have been, had he 
lured McClellan to Richmond, and then 
annihilated him. 



EGBERT E. LEE 65 

Be this as it may, Jolinston was 
ordered to the Peninsula, where Mc- 
Clellan did not show himself niggardly 
in the time expended on taking York- 
town and Williamsburg. Before the 
superior hosts of the enemy the Con- 
federate commander retreated steadily, 
and in his always masterly fashion, to 
the Chickahominy River, Norfolk being 
thus, after all, lost to the enemy. 
Meanwhile Jackson's wonderful dash 
down the Valley had kept McDowell 
from joining McClellan ; and upon the 
latter leader Johnston now turned, as 
soon as he found that part of the Union 
forces had crossed the Chickahominy. 
The great battle of Seven Pines took 
place on May 31, in which there was 
tremendous fighting with no decisive 
result. Lee, eager to be upon the field, 
had volunteered his services to John- 
ston, and rode out from Richmond with 
President Davis to the scene of the 
engagement. He took no part in the 



66 ROBEET E. LEE 

fighting; but, when he learned that 
Johnston had been wounded, and re- 
membered that G. W. Smith, next in 
command, was in bad health, he would 
have been more than human, had he 
not reflected with pleasure that his 
time had probably come. Sure enough, 
on the next day, June 1, after some 
indecisive fighting, the command of the 
army on the Chickahominy devolved 
upon General Robert E. Lee, now for 
the first time placed in a position that 
would enable him to employ to the 
utmost his splendid military gifts. Late 
in the day Lee rode to Smith's head- 
quarters, and relieved him ; but the 
great man in him had previously tri- 
umphed over the warrior, for in the 
morning he had written Smith a most 
encouraging letter, inciting him to win 
a decisive victory before he himself 
could reach the field. Most men would 
have desired a victory for their side; 
but they would have refrained from 



EOBEET E. LEE 67 

wishing, even on paper, that that vic- 
tory should be pushed forward a few 
hours, and thus fall to another com- 
mander. 



V. 

Lee's first duty upon assuming com- 
mand of the Army of Northern Virginia 
was the unpleasant one of having to re- 
sist the general wish and advice of his 
officers to fall back upon a stronger 
position nearer to Eichmond. He felt 
that such action was unnecessary and 
imj)olitic, but he also felt that he did 
not yet have the confidence of his offi- 
cers and troops. Under such circum- 
stances it was a bold thing for him, in 
opposition to the judgment of those 
whom he usually trusted, to decide to 
stand his ground ; but he did it with 
excellent results. His decision once 
reached, he set about obtaining re- en- 
forcements in his usual vigorous fashion. 
He also sent out that brave cavalryman, 
General J. E. B. Stuart, to obtain infor- 
mation as to McClellan's forces and situa- 
tion. Stuart executed a brilliant circuit 
of the whole Union army, and Lee knew 



EGBERT E. LEE 69 

that he had another great lieutenant be- 
sides Jackson. He now prepared to take 
the offensive. 

The complicated movements that fol- 
lowed can be given here only in a large 
way. Jackson was called in with his 
forces, and attended a council of war 
in Richmond along with Longstreet and 
the two Hills. Lee was determined to 
leave Richmond more or less exposed, 
because, with his faculty for divining the 
plans and probable actions of his adver- 
sary, he did not believe that McClellan 
would move upon the city. He seems, 
however, to have been mistaken, accord- 
ing to some authorities, in his views as 
to McClellan' s ultimate disposition of his 
troops. However this may be, the Con- 
federates on the 26th of June began a 
well-conceived attack, which was not 
successful, owing to Jackson's inability to 
bring up his men in time to turn the 
right flank of the Federals. ^^Stone- 
wall'' had overestimated the marching 



70 EGBERT E. LEE 

powers of liis fatigued veterans. Thus, 
as so often, Lee's plans were upset by a 
subordinate's failure to do liis part ; and 
A. P. Hill's gallant but unwise attack 
at Beaver Dam Creek was disastrously 
repulsed. The next day Jackson's ai^- 
pearance was partly neutralized in its 
effects by the general ignorance that 
seemed to prevail regarding the country. 
But, finally, he got into the tremendous 
attack on Porter's corps which goes by 
the name of the battle of Gaines's Mill. 
After several hours of fierce fighting, 
Lee ordered a general advance ; and the 
day was won, but with nearly even losses 
on both sides. It took immense exer- 
tions on the part of the Confederate 
commander to dislodge Porter's inferior 
numbers ; but his superiority to his Fed- 
eral adversary, McClellan, is conspicuous, 
when the latter' s failure to support his 
gallant officer effectively is fully real- 
ized. Lee was thus left in complete 
command of the north bank of the 



ROBERT E. LEE 71 

Chickahominy ; but he had paid dearly 
for a success which might have been 
much greater, had he been properly sec- 
onded. Even now McClellan had a fine 
opportunity to capture Richmond ; but 
he was bent upon retreat to the James, 
so that he might make connection with 
his gunboats. 

Lee was a comparatively long time 
(twenty-four hours) in guessing his op- 
ponent's intentions. He has been criti- 
cised for not using his cavalry to ob- 
tain the necessary information, but such 
use of cavalry does not appear to have 
been much made at that time, and the 
breaking up of the York River Rail- 
road, on which Stuart was engaged, was 
designed to cut McClellan off from his 
previous base of supplies. Besides, in- 
structions had been given subordinates 
to watch the Federals, and report their 
movements, — orders which were not, it 
would seem, properly obeyed. On the 
whole, then, Lee must be absolved from 



72 EOBEET E. LEE 

blame ; and, certainly, the Confederate 
failure on June 29 to hamper seriously 
the retreating Federals was due again to 
the lack of vigor of subordinates, Long- 
street included. Again on the 30th, at 
Frazier's Farm, Lee was not properly 
supported ; and McClellan's army gained 
Malvern Hill, — a position from which 
it could not be dislodged in spite of the 
hard fighting of the Confederates on 
July 1. Yet McClellan retreated in the 
night, for all the world like a whipped 
commander, and finally halted only at 
Harrison's Landing, where he was safe 
under the fire of his gunboats. Thus 
ended the famous Seven Days' fighting 
around Eichmond. 

Lee was not satisfied with the results 
of the campaign, although the Southern 
people were abundantly so, and made 
him their hero for once and all. In the 
main, the results, especially from a polit- 
ical point of view, were superb. Eich- 
mond was relieved ; and the great Army 



EGBERT E. LEE 73 

of the Potomac had been driven to seek 
a new base of supplies, and would not 
speedily take the offensive again. But 
Lee thought that his opponent should 
have been routed. Opinions differ as to 
whether he did not overrate his chances 
of success ; and some of his operations, 
particularly the attack at Malvern 
Hill, have been unfavorably criticised. 
These are matters which the specialists 
must continue to debate ; but it is hard 
to resist the conclusion that Lee was 
right in believing that with proper sup- 
port he could nearly, if not quite, have 
inflicted a crushing defeat instead of 
merely checking McOlellan and turning 
him away from Richmond, — a result 
largely due, it would seem, to that com- 
mander's lack of forward-pushing will.* 
In the fighting of June 30, with McClel- 
lan absent from the field, — almost as 

♦The reader may be interested to know that General 
McClellan's headquarters during a portion of this fight- 
ing were at a farm owned by the writer's father. The 
unfavorable views of McClellan expressed in these 



74 EOBEET E. LEE 

characteristic a habit of his as that of 
exaggerating the forces of the Confeder- 
ateS; — and Stonewall Jackson sluggish 
in his movements, the goddess of Fort- 
une smiled upon the Union cause in 
such a bland fashion as to make the 
efforts of Lee's critics fruitless, when 
they tell us that he overestimated his 
powers. There was a chance for a vic- 
tory on that day that might have led to 
something still more crushing. At any 
rate, the commander who was not absent 
from the field appears to our untrained 
eyes as a magnificent general, ungra- 
ciously hampered by fate. He ap- 
peared to his own soldiers, however, 
an all-conquering hero ; and he himself 
in his proclamation to his splendid 
troops, veterans already and destined 
to give him as loyal and ef&cient sup- 
pages— views that will seem odd in a Southern book— 
are not due, however, to injuries done to the above-men- 
tioned estate, which, as a matter of fact, suffered nearly 
as much from subsequent occupation by the Confed- 
erates. 



ROBEET E. LEE 75 

port in battle after battle as ever great 
leader received, returned the compli- 
ment in the most generous fashion. But 
the army that had retreated had fought 
superbly, too, and had preserved its 
fighting qualities better than the elated 
Southerners then supposed. How could 
it have been otherwise, when Americans 
stood pitted against Americans I 

Meanwhile the Federal government, 
which was hampering itself by bad 
methods of raising troops and by an un- 
wise choice of a general military adviser, 
had organized the Army of Virginia 
under General John Pope, with whom 
McClellan was to join when he had 
extricated his forces. Pope threatened 
the Piedmont region about Charlottes- 
ville, and issued proclamations that in- 
censed both his enemies and his own 
soldiers ; but dislike of the braggart's 
personality could not blind Lee to the 
fact that his army was a menace to Rich- 
mond. He accordingly sent Jackson to 



76 ROBEET E. LEE 

Gordonsville with about twelve thou- 
sand men, and himself watched over 
McClellan, who again began to retreat, 
this time in obedience to directions from 
Washington. This left Lee free to join 
Jackson by the middle of August, in 
order to deal with Pope. It was pro- 
posed to strike the Federals near the 
Rapidan Eiver ; but captured papers re- 
vealed the Confederate plans, and Pope 
retreated toward the Eappahannock, on 
the banks of which river Lee caught up 
with him by August 21. The move- 
ments that followed are too complicated 
for treatment in a sketch like the pres- 
ent. Pope seems to have been bewil- 
dered himself and to have had poor 
advice from Washington ; while his 
troops had nothing of the solidarity of 
a regular army such as that of Lee, 
which made up for its lack of clothes 
and food by its enthusiasm and endur- 
ance. Lee, on the other hand, was 
flushed with success, and knew that with 



BOBEET E. LEE 77 

Jackson to help him he could accom- 
plish great results. In his confidence 
he divided his army, to give Jackson an 
opportunity to make a flank movement 
on Pope^s rear, and hold him at bay 
until he himself was ready to offer 
battle. It was a rash procedure, and 
might have been dearly paid for if it 
had been made against a greater antago- 
nist. But after five days the ventur- 
ous chieftain reaped the reward of his 
courage and of his unerring ability to 
profit by an opponent's mistakes. The 
Federal forces were completely routed 
on August 30 upon the same field of Ma- 
nassas that had witnessed the first great 
Confederate victory. Pope's army took 
refuge at Washington, while Lee paused 
for a moment to determine what use to 
make of his great success. In three 
months he had practically cleared Vir- 
ginia of about two hundred thousand 
Federal soldiers with less than half that 
number. Was it not time to carry the 
war into the enemy's country? 



78 BOBEBT E. LEE 

Lee was not long in making up his 
mind that an advance into Maryland 
with his seasoned, eager troops would 
certainly postpone Federal attempts to 
reinvade Virginia, and thus favor the 
recuperation of the latter State, while, 
in case of victory, insuring an advan- 
tageous position for future movements, 
and perhaps inciting the Confederate 
sympathizers in Maryland to attempt to 
withdraw that Commonwealth from the 
Union. His letter to Mr. Davis of Sep- 
tember 3 outlined his plans, and won 
the executive consent after the army 
was in motion ; while the shorter one of 
the 7th, from the neighborhood of Fred- 
erick, indicated that he did not antici- 
pate any permanent success with the 
Marylanders. He issued to the latter, 
however, a very fine proclamation, 
matching the dignified general orders 
given a few days before to his own 
confident troops. 

Meanwhile the army of about forty- 



BOBEBT E. LEE 79 

five thousand men, undismayed by short- 
ness of supplies, especially of shoes, 
began its forward march on September 3. 
Lee marched also, or rode in ambulance ; 
for a fall from his frightened horse had 
injured his right hand to such an extent 
that it was some time before he could 
hold a bridle. The Potomac was crossed 
on the 5th to the tune of ^^ Maryland, 
my Maryland.'' From Frederick, Jack- 
son was despatched to capture Harper's 
Ferry, which he did on the 15th, the 
Federal commander having been ordered 
to maintain his position in what proved 
to be a complete trap. This operation, 
however, weakened Lee, against whom 
McClellan was now advancing; for it 
delayed any move for the capture either 
of Harrisburg or of Baltimore, and left 
him with scattered forces. Yet Lee, as 
we see from his subsequent report, 
deemed the reduction of Harper's Ferry 
absolutely necessary. The correctness of 
his judgment has been questioned ; but it 



80 ROBEBT E. LEE 

does seem that a hostile force of ten or 
twelve thousand might have been a seri- 
ous menace to the Confederates in case 
of an enforced retreat over the Potomac 
in consequence of a Federal victory, and 
there was an excellent chance of bag- 
ging prisoners. Then, too, Lee probably 
counted on Federal evacuation of the 
post, which was only reasonable. Such 
evacuation took place at the beginning 
of the Gettysburg campaign. 

It is certain, however, that hostile for- 
tune had more to do with the failure of 
this Maryland campaign than any mis- 
take made by Lee. Two copies of that 
commander's order outlining his plans 
had been sent to General D. H. Hill. 
One of these, by the merest accident, 
was found by a Federal soldier and car- 
ried to McClellan. He at once dis- 
played an energy rather unusual for 
him, and attacked Hill at Boonsborough 
on Sunday, the 14th. Fortunately, Lee 
was quick enough to re-enforce his gal- 



EGBERT E. LEE 81 

lant officer by about four thousand men 
under Longstreet j and the Confederates 
managed to hold their mountain top. 
But affairs looked desperate until the 
news came that Harper's Ferry had 
been taken, and that Jackson was has- 
tening back. Then Lee, with his char- 
acteristic cool rashness, determined to 
give battle at Sharpsburg, though his 
divisions were still separated and his 
enemy was in force. He has been much 
criticised for not retreating, and has 
been accused of underestimating the 
fighting qualities of the soldiers opposed 
to him. The latter charge is doubtless 
true, but the fault was not idiosyncratic. 
It was determined by well-known South- 
ern traits, and should hardly be called 
a fault, since it has unquestionably led 
to more victories than defeats. Besides, 
Lee doubtless counted more on Mc- 
Clellan's mistakes, — a more reasonable 
ground of confidence ; and, fighting for 
political motives, he was not inclined to 



82 EGBERT E. LEE 

throw away even a bare chance of win- 
ning a victory, or at least proving that, 
thongh shaken off, he was an antagonist 
whom it would be prudent to compound 
with ere he should gather himself for 
another spring. But, after all, settling 
or not settling such matters in one^s 
closet is a very different thing from 
settling them on the field ; and, even if 
Lee was unduly rash, it is as plain as 
anything in history that he fought the 
battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam, on 
September 17 with magnificent skill. 
Mr. John 0. Ropes, perhaps his ablest 
critic, declares emphatically, '^Of Gen- 
eral Lee's management of the battle 
there is nothing but praise to be said.'^ 
It was an enormously bloody conflict, 
the Confederates losing about one-fifth 
of the troops within reach, — ie., eight 
thousand out of forty thousand, — the 
Federals a slightly less fraction of their 
seventy thousand within reach, but over 
a fourth of the forty-six thousand who 



ROBEET E. LEE 83 

encountered Lee's thirty-one thousand 
in desperate grapple. Yet, after all this 
carnage, it was really only a drawn bat- 
tle ; and the next morning, though Lee 
was eager to fight, his best lieutenants 
pronounced against attempting the Fed- 
eral right flank. In the afternoon news 
came of advancing re-enforcements for 
McClellan, who, not using all the troops 
available, had fought his great battle 
badly enough ; and the brave Army of 
Northern Virginia had to seek the region 
that gave them their name. They passed 
the Potomac in perfect order, McClellan, 
who with more enterprise would have 
attacked them on the 18th, doing practi- 
cally nothing to stop them. By October 
2 Lee was able to issue an address to 
his soldiers from his headquarters near 
Winchester, reviewing the prowess of 
their arms in terms as deserved as they 
were glowing. Still more remarkable 
achievements awaited them ; but, politi- 
cally, the campaign just ended had been 



84 ROBERT E. LEE 

a failure. Splendid fighting could not 

save the isolated and depleted South. 

A young British soldier, afterward 
famous as Lord "Wolseley, who visited 
Lee's headquarters near Winchester, 
which were pitched in a rocky place, 
because Colonel Long was vexed that 
Lee would not occupy a farm- yard, 
much less a farm-house, for fear of dis- 
turbing the occupants, has given an in- 
teresting description of the simple way 
the great commander lived, when his 
troops were at rest. Simplicity in its 
best sense was indeed Lee's distinguish- 
ing note. Save the three stars on his 
collar, which a colonel might also wear, 
he wore no finery. He did not even 
carry a sword, though not because such 
weapons were not presented to him by 
admirers. He was reserved in de- 
meanor, and was treated with great def- 
erence by his officers and men, who 
behind his back, however, gave him a 
name that stirs the survivors to-day, and 



ROBERT E. LEE 85 

Slims up as much affection and admira- 
tion as any leader has ever received, — 
the homely name of ^^Marse Robert." 
Yet he cracked jokes with his staff, as, 
for example, about his favorite beverage, 
buttermilk, which was too mild for 
some of his young oflficers. And when- 
ever, as rarely happened, he lost pa- 
tience with any of them, he was sure to 
seize a speedy opportunity to do some 
little courteous, kindly act that would 
make its recipient glad that he had un- 
wittingly stirred that temper so seldom 
ruffled. In other words, Lee's whole 
deportment was that of an infinitely 
modest gentleman, Gleneral Grant's sub- 
sequent description of him as austere 
being amusingly wide of the mark. 
Certainly, austerity is about the last 
quality to be found in the private let- 
ters Lee was writing at this time, in 
which he poured out his heart with re- 
gard to the destitution of his troops; 
nor do austere commanders, as a rule, 



86 EGBERT E. LEE 

trouble themselves to write about and 
distribute troopers' socks knit by their 
own daughters and female friends, or to 
devote part of their valuable time to 
obtaining permission from their govern- 
ment to return a fallen adversary's 
sword and horse to his widow. 

Lee occupied his rest in beseeching 
the administration, now in sore financial 
straits, for supplies, — sometimes he had 
to plead for soap, — and in recruiting 
and disciplining his army. He was also 
forming plans for an onward movement, 
and wishing McClellan would do some- 
thing that would employ the Confeder- 
ate troops, who, since a recent revival 
of religious enthusiasm, were another 
^^New Model." Toward the last of 
October McClellan moved, wisely choos- 
ing to penetrate between Lee's army and 
Richmond, which that army had to 
guard at all hazards. In November he 
was superseded by Burnside, whose 
movements made it plain that he could 



ROBEET E. LEE 87 

be met on the Rappahannock at Freder- 
icksburg, though Lee would have pre- 
ferred, with the consent of the Rich- 
mond authorities, to do his fighting on 
more interior lines, in the hope, in case 
of victory, of more completely cutting 
off his antagonist from his base of sup- 
plies. Fredericksburg, however, was de- 
cided upon, and Lee moved Longstreet 
from Culpeper — where Burnside ought 
probably to have sought him — to the 
Rappahannock, to dispute the Federal 
passage of that river. Jackson, whose 
corps had been for some time in the Val- 
ley, was, after much wavering corre- 
spondence, brought within reach, Lee 
again proving himself to be right in 
counting on his adversary's inaction 
for a period in which a greater general 
might have accomplished much. Fi- 
nally, after having effected the crossing 
of the river by his powerful army. Burn- 
side began on December 13 one of the 
most tremendous battles of the whole 



88 EOBEET E. LEE 

war, by ordering an attack on the Con- 
federate right, where Jackson's thickly- 
massed troops stood undefended. The 
movement resulted in complete failure, 
though several times renewed. The at- 
tempt on the left, strongly intrenched 
on Marye's Hill, was equally disastrous, 
the fighting toward evening becoming 
terrific. By nightfall the Federals had 
lost over twelve thousand men, the Con- 
federates less than five thousand. Burn- 
side would have fought again the next 
day ; but his officers dissuaded him, nor 
was Lee in a condition to take the offen- 
sive. The Federals recrossed the river, 
and for the nonce the two armies 
watched one another amid the increas- 
ing discomforts of the winter. 

The battle of Fredericksburg was as 
picturesque as it was terrible ; and, as 
Lee took his station on the hill since 
called by his name, his heart must have 
been filled with exultation when he 
heard the roar of the batteries and 



EGBERT E. LEE 89 

saw the gayly advancing columns hurled 
back, whether by Jackson's or by Long- 
street's veterans. But he must also have 
felt that Providence was kind in giving 
him an ineffective opponent like Burn- 
side, though he could hardly have 
guessed that he was soon to have another 
taste of her favors in the choice of Gren- 
eral Joseph Hooker as Burnside's suc- 
cessor. His family letters show, how- 
ever, that he ascribed his success to God, 
not to fortune. 

After a trying winter, varied only by 
cavalry raids and pathetic attempts to 
secure supplies, Lee sprang into life and 
energy when he found that Hooker, with 
an army over twice as large as his, was 
preparing to cross the Eappahannock. 
The Federal commander had thought to 
deceive Lee as to his real movements, 
but the latter saw through his schemes. 
Hooker's plans seem, however, to have 
been good ; and he unquestionably got 
Lee into a dangerous position, when the 



90 ROBERT E. LEE 

latter' s reduced forces are taken into 
account. Some writers go so far as to 
deny that Lee divined Hooker's move- 
ments j but it is at least clear that, after 
beginning well, the Federal commander 
lost his head in a manner to be ac- 
counted for only by physiological con- 
siderations. 

Hooker gained at Chancellorsville — 
a clearing on the edge of the great thicket 
known as the Wilderness — his desired 
position in Lee's rear, and thought he 
had that general at his mercy. Lee, 
however, was never more alert ; and on 
the night of May 1 he suggested to Jack- 
son a circuitous march that enabled that 
superb corps commander to fall upon 
Hooker's rear unexpectedly, and inflict 
one of the most crushing defeats known 
to history. It was purchased, however, 
as the world knows, by the loss of the 
life that after Lee's the South could least 
spare. Stonewall, while reconnoitring 
for another attack, was shot in the dark 



EOBEET E. LEE 91 

by Ms own men. When lie heard of 
Jackson's wound, Lee sent him word 
that the great victory of May 2 be- 
longed not to himself, but to the man 
who had surprised the enemy so com- 
pletely and disastrously. This was mag- 
nanimous, and therefore like Lee j but it 
is not fair. He himself was in the thick 
of the fighting of the 3d ; and the sol- 
diers who stopped for a moment, in their 
uncontrollable desire to cheer him as he 
rode to the front, showed that they knew 
well enough who the real head of the 
Army of Northern Virginia was, and 
who was entitled to the crowning glory 
of its every victory. Jackson was great, 
and his loss ever after hampered his 
superior; but General Fitzhugh Lee is 
clearly right in claiming Chancellors- 
ville as his uncle's victory, and, perhaps, 
his most wonderful battle. Lee also 
practically claimed it for himself in a 
letter to Dr. A. T. Bledsoe, — as fine a 
letter as one could wish to read. 



92 EOBEET E. LEE 

The fighting that followed May 3d 
need not be described. The 6th revealed 
to Lee the fact that Hooker had used the 
stormy night to retreat beyond the Eap- 
pahannock. The losses on both sides 
during the successive fights had been 
very heavy and proportionally evenj 
but in spite of the fact that losses were 
bound to tell more disastrously upon him 
than upon his opponent, and in spite of 
his constant lack of supplies, Lee, actu- 
ated by his standing desire to destroy 
the Army of the Potomac, determined 
to draw Hooker from his position by 
once more invading the North. The 
rightful confidence of a born soldier in 
his own powers and in those of his tried 
veterans, and the political necessity for 
striking rapid and disheartening blows, 
may perhaps justify plans which few 
commanders would have dreamed of, 
much less dared to follow ; but the wis- 
dom of the Gettysburg campaign, even 
If victory had fallen to the Confederates 



ROBEET E. LEE 93 

in the great battles of July, will always 
furnish historians with matter for dis- 
cussion. It must be remembered, how- 
ever, that Lee^s proposal to have Beau- 
regard brought up to Virginia to threaten 
Washington was an integral part of his 
scheme, and that it was beyond his 
power to force the Confederate authori- 
ties to accede to his wishes. 

The bold and well-executed move- 
ments by which Lee gathered his forces 
for the passage of the Potomac, and drew 
Hooker northward, must be passed over, 
although it should be noted that through 
a reorganization the Army of Northern 
Virginia, with its three corps under 
A. P. Hill, Longstreet, and Ewell, was 
equal to three armies of about twenty- 
five thousand each. By June 26 Cham- 
bersburg was reached j and the next day 
General Order No. 73 was issued, which 
closed with an injunction against unnec- 
essary destruction of private property. 
But now want of information with re- 



94 EGBERT E. LEE 

gard to Hooker's movements began to 
be felt ; for Stuart, through a great 
blunder, had allowed the Federal army 
to cut him off from his own commander. 
Lee's orders are said to have been in- 
definite ; but, after all, one does not pre- 
sumably need to counsel able lieutenants 
not to commit felo de se. 

On June 28 Lee learned that he was 
to have a far better soldier than Hooker 
against him, — General George Gordon 
Meade. 'No dismay was felt at the 
news, but Meade's swift marching ren- 
dered a rapid concentration of the Con- 
federate forces necessary. By July 1 
both armies were near Gettysburg, and 
some fighting advantageous to the Con- 
federates had been done, Lee in the 
mean while having been kept anxious 
by Stuart's absence. In fact, the great 
pivotal battle now to be fought was pre- 
cipitated through Lee's lack of requisite 
information. Had he been at liberty 
to choose his time and place, the result 



ROBEET E. LEE 95 

might have been different. As it was, 
the Federals had taken a strong position 
on Cemetery Ridge ; and Lee would have 
to do the dislodging, though, as a mat- 
ter of fact, Meade, too, would have liked 
to choose a different field of operations. 
On the morning of July 2 dislodgment 
was attempted ; but Longstreet, a slow 
mover, failed to come up in time, al- 
though he had only four miles to trav- 
erse. This unforeseen delay enabled 
the Federals to intrench themselves still 
more strongly, and by the close of the 
day their various corps had reached 
the scene of action without having been 
attacked in detail. The blame for the 
Confederate remissness seems to attach 
to Longstreet, who was plainly out of 
sympathy with Lee's plans. Whether 
the latter ought to have removed his 
lieutenant is one of those questions no 
one can settle, yet it is at least clear 
that the ever- considerate Lee was not 
the man to take such a step. 



96 EOBEET E. LEE 

But at last in the afternoon a fierce 
attack was delivered. Both sides made 
a dash for a hill, Little Eound Top, 
which through a gross error on General 
Sickles' s part had been left unoccupied ; 
but the Federals reached the summit 
first, and Hood's brave Texans could 
not dislodge them. Meanwhile Sickles' s 
corps at the weakest point of the Fed- 
eral line was forced backward by a ter- 
rible assault from Longstreet's men, and 
by seven o'clock Meade's left wing had 
been badly crippled. But the Confeder- 
ates did not follow up their success, and 
night fell leaving Lee still sanguine of 
an eventual victory. If Longstreet had 
let his superb troops get into action 
earlier, and if Hill and Ewell had sup- 
ported him proiicrly when he did begin, 
the much debated story of Meade's in- 
tention to retreat would never have 
occupied subsequent writers. In other 
words, if Lee had had three Jacksons, 
he might practically have won Gettys- 



EOBEET E. LEE 97 

burg on the second day j but he must 
not be blamed for his choice of corps 
commanders, for they were probably as 
good as any he could have secured, all 
charges of favoritism in their appoint- 
ments to the contrary notwithstanding. 
That such charges should ever have 
been made against a man like General 
Lee is a crowning proof of the fact 
that military controversies almost neu- 
tralize the glory of honorable warfare. 

On the morning of the 3d, Longstreet 
was again tardy in supporting Ewell, 
and the Confederates suffered severely 
in consequence. In the afternoon there 
was a great artillery duel ; and, when 
this slacked, Pickett, as Lee had ordered, 
began to move his chosen troops forward. 
When they had traversed half of the 
fourteen hundred yards between them 
and Cemetery Eidge, the Federal guns 
again opened fire ; but the Confederates 
had nearly exhausted their ammunition 
without Lee's knowledge, and their guns 



98 EOBEET E. LEE 

did not support the advancing columns 
as he had intended. Fifteen howitzers 
did indeed move after them, but the 
ammunition chests on the caissons were 
not filled ! 

Of the ^^wild charge^' now made, 
there is little need to speak ; for the 
world has never been able to forget it. 
Such of Pickett's men as the terrific 
Federal fire left on their feet gained 
the crest and the breastworks, but their 
success was only for a moment. Heth's 
division had not been able to face the 
fire, and the other supports planned did 
not become efiectual. So the great 
charge has gone down to history as 
merely a charge, whereas there are 
reasons for believing that, if Lee's orders 
liad been followed, Meade's compara- 
tively weak centre would have been 
forced with permanent results. Pickett's 
first report would have brought this out, 
had not Lee, with his usual magnanim- 
ity, urged him to destroy it and write 



EOBEET E. LEE 99 

another. The great soldier, but greater 
man, preferred to take upon himself the 
total responsibility for the failure of 
his brilliant plans. Thus the greatest 
defeat of his life is the chief glory of his 
noble character. 

Meade's army was seemingly too much 
shattered for him to venture the next 
day upon the offensive, although Lee 
stood ready for him. Under these cir- 
cumstances, and while he still had about 
fifty thousand eager men, the Confederate 
leader, knowing that his ammunition was 
short, and fearing that his communica- 
tions might be cut off, began to retreat. 
He moved calmly, and reached the Po- 
tomac without serious molestation, but 
found it swollen and uupassable. Meade 
followed, but intrenched himself, and 
did not venture an attack. The Potomac 
having subsided, Lee got his army across 
with masterly skill ,♦ and the great cam- 
paign of invasion, which represented 
more of a political than a physical de- 
feat, was concluded. 



100 ROBERT E. LEE 

The Federal commander crossed over 
into Virginia shortly after, but no events 
of importance took place in that State 
during the remainder of the year. Else- 
where the Confederacy suffered great 
losses. Yicksburg fell before Grant's 
sturdy blows, and Federal control of 
the Mississippi was thus established. 
Things went badly for the South in Ten- 
nessee also, and Charleston was closely 
pressed, both commanders in Virginia 
furnishing troops for the respective oper- 
ations. In September, 1863, it was pro- 
posed to send Lee to Tennessee ; but the 
effects of his absence from Virginia were 
too much feared to permit the experi- 
ment. Lee himself, feeling that a crisis 
was at hand, and, perhaps, weary of 
bearing criticism, suggested early in 
August that Mr. Davis should relieve 
him by a younger man ; but the Con- 
federate President properly replied, 
^^To ask me to substitute you by some 
one, in my judgment, more fit to com- 



EGBERT E. LEE 101 

mand, or who would possess more of the 
confidence of the army or of the reflect- 
ing men of the country, is to demand an 
impossibility. ' ' 

So Lee remained in charge, and raised 
his army to nearly fifty-nine thousand, 
which he depleted by thirteen thousand 
the next month by detaching Longstreet 
for Tennessee and Pickett for Peters- 
burg. With his reduced force he stood 
against Meade on the Rapidan, and 
early in October crossed over to seek 
battle. Finding his rear threatened, the 
Federal general retreated beyond the 
Rappahannock. Lee followed, and vari- 
ous manoeuvres ensued, Meade at one 
time marching South to get at Lee, while 
the latter was moving in the opposite 
direction to get at Meade. Once or 
twice the Confederates got into nasty 
situations ; but when, finally, the two 
armies late in November found them- 
selves opposed on the little stream 
known as Mine Run, it became ap- 



102 EOBEET E. LEE 

parent to Meade who had expected an 
easy victory, but had been subjected to 
his rival's fate of having a subordinate 
fail him, that Lee had intrenched him- 
self too strongly to be worth disturb- 
ing. He accordingly withdrew to Cul- 
peper, and the campaign was over, both 
generals having shown much ability, 
Meade, however, as was natural, gaining 
more prestige than Lee, from whom men 
now expected masterly achievements in 
every situation. 



VI. 

Never had Lee's troops suffered 
greater privations than they did during 
the winter of 1863-64 in their defences 
behind the Eapidan. They kept their 
guns pointing steadily toward the Fed- 
erals at Culj)eper Court-house, and they 
kept their spirits up within their own 
camp ; but they had a hard time keep- 
ing hunger down. Even their com- 
mander, whose small tent was pitched 
on a hillside in their midst, allowed 
himself meat only twice a week, and 
sent every delicacy that came to him to 
the hospitals. But he maintained his 
dignity, his courage, and his faith in 
God ; and he presents almost, if not quite, 
as sublime a picture as Washington at 
Valley Forge. His fellow- citizens, al- 
though they, too, were in the depths of 
privation, felt such admiration for him 
that it was a pain to them not to be able 
to show it in a concrete form. But he 



104 EOBEET E. LEE 

would take nothing j and his letter to the 
City Council of Richmond, who had en- 
deavored to make him accept a house 
for his family, throws a splendid light on 
his character. And, as if to try him 
more severely, sore family afflictions 
beset him. 

With the spring, however, came the 
stir and strain of action he was always 
craving. Grant, the hero of the West 
and commander-in-chief of all the Union 
forces, had taken actual charge of the 
Army of the Potomac, which was nomi- 
nally under General Meade, and meant 
to fight the war out to an end. Grant 
was a great general ; but he was to find 
a still greater antagonist, even if a mor- 
tal one, as he encouraged himself by 
thinking. Being mortal, Lee could be 
^^ hammered'' out ; and, as that was the 
only way to subdue him and end the 
war. Grant was, politically at least, 
justified in taking it, although it may 
be contended that he really gained his 



EOBEET E. LEE 105 

point by pressing Lee flat by means of a 
siege. His success does not, however, 
entitle him to wear Lee^s laurels ; for it 
is as clear as anything can be that in 
the campaigns briefly to be described 
the general who was finally defeated 
was a greater master of the art of war 
than his opponent, that, if he had had 
Grant's task to perform, even against a 
general as great as himself, he would 
have done it more expeditiously and 
with less loss of life than Grant did. 
Such, at least, will always be the belief 
of many of us, in spite of our genuine 
admiration for Grant, both as a general 
and as a man. 

The Army of the Potomac at the 
opening of the campaign numbered 
nearly one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand, and was admirably equipped. 
Lee had less than sixty-two thousand 
ragged veterans. He was fighting on 
the defensive, however, in a country 
most dif&cult for an attacking enemy ; 



106 EOBEET E. LEE 

and these facts must be allowed to neu- 
tralize much of Grant's numerical su- 
periority. Yet we should not forget 
that the masterly man is the one who 
knows how to use his opportunities to 
the best advantage ; and this, judging 
by the delays and losses he caused Grant, 
Lee appears to have done. Grant did 
not do it, seemingly, when on May 4, 
1864, he set his army in motion across 
the Eapidan, and halted in the tangled 
thickets of the Wilderness; for he there 
gave Lee the field of operations that best 
suited him. On the afternoon of the 
5th the Federal right and the Confeder- 
ate left came upon one another in the 
brush ; and the latter, being in position, 
sent the former reeling back with loss. 
On the right Hancock failed to drive 
A. P. Hill from his position. Early on 
the morning of the 6th Hill was again 
assailed, and was saved only by the 
happy but tardy arrival of Longstreet. 
It was in this fight that Gregg's Texas 



EOBEET E. LEE 107 

Brigade, recognizing Lee riding along 
with them to their charge, cried out to 
a man : ^^Go back, General Lee! Go 
back!" He had just before, carried 
away by the battle-fever, shouted out 
to them, ^^My Texas boys, you must 
charge." That was how they answered 
him as they ran. Lee still pressing on, 
the shout of protestation was redoubled ; 
and a sergeant nerved himself to seize 
his bridle-rein. Then, disappointed but 
assuredly proud at heart, the great 
leader dropped behind. 

The Confederate success secured by 
Longstreet's advance against Hancock 
was much checked by the former's 
wounding at the hands of his own men, 
which forced Lee to take charge in per- 
son. Hancock's troops were now in- 
trenched behind logs, however ; and, 
although the Confederates carried a por- 
tion of his defences, they were finally 
driven out, and the battle was practi- 
cally over. The losses had been heavy 



108 EGBERT E. LEE 

on both sides; but Grant's determina- 
tion to withdraw to Spottsylvania Court- 
house showed that the advantage rested 
with Lee, if indeed any advantage could 
come out of such an Inferno, in which 
men of the same blood fought hand to 
hand in the tangled brush like wild 
beasts contending for a lair. 

The Federals, in their advance upon 
Spottsylvania Court-house, naturally 
thought that they had left Lee fifteen 
miles to the rear; but he had again 
guessed and forestalled his adversary's 
plans, and had sent General R. H. An- 
derson with Longstreet's corps by a cir- 
cuitous route to plant himself across 
Grant's line of march toward Richmond. 
General Long is not far out of the way 
when he describes these movements as 
Napoleonic. Nor need Napoleon have 
been ashamed of the hard fighting done 
on either side for the next five days 
(May 8-12), during which Grant was 
extricating himself from the difficult 



EOBEET E. LEE 109 

country in order to effect a junction 
with Butler on the James. Manoeuvr- 
ing being impracticable, Grant simply 
had to fight his way out j but his attacks 
on the intrenched Confederates, although 
delivered with heroic energy and deter- 
mination, were usually repulsed with 
great loss. On the 12th, however, a 
breach was made in the Southern lines 
at the famous Salient. This led to tre- 
mendous efforts on Lee's part to check 
the advance of the Federal masses. The 
carnage was tremendous, but the Feder- 
als were at last forced to desist from 
their efforts. Lee, as at the Wilderness 
and as at Spottsylvania on the 10th, tried 
to charge at a desperate moment during 
this contest of the 12th ; but he was 
again forced to retire by his troops. 

From May 13 to 18 Grant tried no 
more fighting, and sent for re-enforce- 
ments, while the Confederates were glad 
to rest. On the 18th and 19th he again 
attacked Lee's line, looking for weak 



110 EOBEET E. LEE 

places, but failed to find them. On the 
20tli, having received large re-enforce- 
ments, he followed his former plan of 
a flank march j but Lee was again too 
quick for him, and reached Hanover 
Junction a day before him. Here Grant 
had to cross the North Anna River j 
and, when this had been done with loss, 
he found that Lee had wedged his centre, 
which rested on the river, between the 
two Federal wings. Such a position 
promised nothing even for a hammerer ; 
and he hastened on to the Pamunkey, 
Lee again using his advantage of operat- 
ing on anterior lines to arrest any ad- 
vance on Eichmond, by taking up a 
position on the Totopotomoy. Again 
Grant shrank from a general attack, and 
moved on ; and again Lee kept pace with 
him. There was skirmishing of course, 
and heavy fighting at Bethesda Church, 
and finally, on June 1 and 2, very severe 
fighting and skirmishing took place on 
the old battle-ground of Cold Harbor, 



EGBERT E. LEE 111 

near the Ohickahominy. A desperate 
assault on the Confederate works was 
made on June 3, and Grant, according 
to the most reliable figures, lost about 
ten thousand men to his opponent's 
two thousand. Undismayed, the Union 
leader would have renewed the attack 
the next day ; but even as bold a fighter 
as Hancock used his discretion, and rested 
his men. The hammering was too mu^ch 
for the subordinate generals, when they 
had to deliver blows with such rapid- 
ity. They preferred the slower strokes 
of a siege, and Grant finally showed 
by his change of plans that he agreed 
with them. It was high time ; but reg- 
ular approaches could not keep Lee from 
sending troops against Hunter in the 
Valley, and on June 12 Grant moved 
toward the James. He was now com- 
pelled to join Butler's already harassed 
force, and to reach Richmond by first 
taking Petersburg. In other words, he 
had made miscalculations that had dam- 



112 ROBEET E. LEE 

pened the spirits of his splendid army, 
had lost nearly fifty-five thousand men 
between the Eapidan and the James, and 
had been outgeneralled by Lee at almost 
every turn. It is true that one would 
not gather this from his ^^ Memoirs.'^ 
Yet he was nearer his goal, although 
the Confederates, flushed with victory, 
hardly perceived it. Twenty thousand 
men could not be lost with impunity by 
the cooped-up South ; and the survivors 
who fought under Lee were mortal, like 
their commander, and would not know 
how to conquer that fell foe, hunger. 
Lee was in reality playing a masterly 
game of chess with an inferior adver- 
sary, who, however, had the privilege 
of replacing his pieces as fast as they 
were taken. 

By the evening of June 18, Lee had 
joined his forces with those of Beaure- 
gard for the defence of Petersburg, and 
the last stage of the war had begun, the 
Federals having meanwhile lost upward 



ROBEET E. LEE 113 

of ten thousand men through attacks 
upon the troops behind Beauregard^ s 
trenches. It seemed as if Grant had for- 
gotten his lesson ; but he had not, and 
was soon intrenching himself for the 
siege of Petersburg. Lee from this time 
felt that the struggle was hopeless, so far 
as Richmond was concerned; yet the 
Confederate authorities persisted in be- 
lieving that the South' s fortunes stood 
or fell with her capital. Lee had not 
been strenuous enough to make himself 
a dominating power, like Cromwell or 
Washington. So there was nothing for 
him to do but fight it out to the bitter 
end, and lose his gallant army and his 
well -served cause, but not his enduring 
fame and honor. It is idle to wish that 
he had taken matters in his own hands, 
and retreated to the Valley. That 
would not have been in consonance with 
that exquisiteness of character that gives 
him his chief charm, and it would only 
have protracted a doomed struggle. 



114 EOBEET E. LEE 

For, although in this summer of 1864 
the North seemed to waver in its Her- 
culean task, there is little reason to be- 
lieve that any success Lee might have 
had by luring Grant into the mountains 
would have brought peace and Con- 
federate independence. 

There is no need to describe the siege 
of Petersburg, which lasted from June, 
1864, to the end of March, 1865, or to 
recount the contemporary movements 
farther South by which Sherman slowly 
crushed out all chance of succor for Lee 
and his veterans. Grant's strong works 
protected him, and his ample supplies 
rendered his ultimate victory certain. 
Yet his efforts against the Weldon Eail- 
road in the summer and autumn cost 
him dearly, as did also his famous at- 
tempt late in July to blow up the Con- 
federate works in front of Petersburg. 
The ensuing battle of the Crater proved 
that Lee's veterans were still invincible, 
and that the Federals still had subordi- 



EGBERT E. LEE 115 

nate generals, who had learned nothing 
by experience. But the bravery of the 
Confederate private soldier and the gen- 
ius of their commander, and the spirit 
and dash of subordinates like Early, were 
all unavailing. Nor was it now worth 
while to give Lee the empty honor of the 
commandership-in-chief of the Confeder- 
ate armies (February, 1865), — a position 
which should have been his long before. 
That he would have filled it admirably 
is clear from the suggestions as to opera- 
tions far afield that he had been continu- 
ally making in his letters. Probably 
the final result would not have been dif- 
ferent, but posterity would have had the 
satisfaction of knowing that the right 
man was in the right place. 

Yet was not this true, after all 1 Was 
not the right man in his place — amid 
those wintry, shelterless trenches around 
Petersburg — as commander of those 
ragged, frozen, starved, but unconquered 
troops who held their thirty-five or forty 



116 ROBEET E. LEE 

miles of defences with a thousand men to 
the mile? What other American save 
"Washington would have been the right 
man there I And how can any man or 
woman, who loves courage and genius, 
and unselfishness and gentleness and im- 
plicit trust in God, not love Lee, what- 
ever may be thought of the losing cause 
he served ? Who among us does not envy 
the opportunity of that Richmond lady 
to show her love, who made him drink 
the last cup of tea she had, and com- 
placently sipped the muddy water of 
James River, that he might not detect 
her sacrifice and refuse to accept her 
homage ? 

But we must hasten to the closing 
scene of the great drama. Late in 
March, 1865, Lee planned a desperate 
attack upon Grant's right ; but, as so 
often before, his subordinates failed him. 
Then Grant tried the Confederate right ; 
and Lee, guessing his intention, took the 
initiative in order to frustrate him, but, 



EGBERT E. LEE 117 

finding the Federals too strongly massed, 
had to retire to his works. On April 2 
the Federals broke the weak Confederate 
lines; and, Lee's position becoming un- 
tenable, he resolved, if possible, to lead 
his thirty thousand men to some defensi- 
ble point in the interior. Notice was 
given to Eichmond, and that city sur- 
rendered on the 3d. Lee pressed on to 
Amelia Court-house, where he had or- 
dered supplies to be in waiting. In some 
unexplained way his directions failed to 
take effect j and the provision train 
passed through Amelia, and was un- 
loaded in Eichmond. It was a bitter 
disappointment. Grant was fast ap- 
proaching with a large part of his forces, 
and yet the Confederates had no food to 
support them either for a last fight or for 
a swift retreat. Nevertheless, it is hard 
to say which bore the disappointment 
more bravely, the commander or his 
troops. Finally, on April 7, Grant sent 
a most courteous note, asking for a sur- 



118 EOBEET E. LEE 

render. Lee still hoped to secure sup- 
plies at Appomattox Court-liouse, and 
replied that he did not consider his cause 
hopeless, but that in order to save a 
useless waste of blood he should like to 
know Grant's terms. Further corre- 
spondence followed, and on the evening 
of the 8th Lee learned that his hoped- 
for stores had been captured. He then 
took his last chance of war, and ordered 
his remnant, only ten thousand strong, 
to break through the enemy in front, 
unless the latter' s infantry were found 
too heavily massed. On the morning 
of the 9th the devoted forces moved 
forward ; but, after a little fighting, 
Gordon reported the dreaded presence 
of preponderant infantry barring his 
advance, and demanded re- enforcements, 
doubtless intending no irony. Lee had 
nothing left to do but to send a "flag 
of truce to Grant, with the declara- 
tion to those about him that he would 
rather die a thousand deaths than go 



EOBEET E. LEE* 119 

through the necessary interview. But 
he had resolved that it was his duty to 
surrender, and duty was always para- 
mount with him. 

The meeting with Grant took place a 
little before noon on the same morning 
(April 9, 1865) at a private residence 
in the village of Appomattox Court- 
house. Nothing could have exceeded 
Grant's courtesy. Indeed, he rose to the 
full stature of a hero ; and the scene of 
the greatest surrender in American his- 
tory ought to be remembered with pride 
by every citizen of our now united 
country, for it illustrates, as perhaps 
no similar event has ever done, the es- 
sential nobility of human nature. 

The rest is soon told. Grant gener- 
ously allowed the Confederate privates 
to keep their horses for their spring 
ploughing ; and Lee rode away to be 
surrounded by his ragged veterans, who 
still refused to believe he would sur- 
render, and who sobbed in anguish when 



120 EOBEET E. LEE 

lie told them that the struggle was over. 
The tears stood in his eyes j and they 
stand in the eyes of those who love him, 
as to-day they read over or recall the 
pathetic scene. On the following day 
he issued to the survivors of the Army of 
Northern Virginia as dignified an ad- 
dress as any commander, victorious or 
defeated, has ever written. After re- 
ceiving visits from old friends like Gen- 
eral Meade, — pathetic visits, which yet 
show how much human nature, with its 
godlike capacities, ought to be above the 
brutal necessity of settling disputes by 
war, — he mounted Traveller, and rode 
slowly toward Eichmond. Halting at 
the house of his brother, Charles Carter, 
in Powhatan County, he insisted, in 
spite of the rain, on spending a last 
night in his old tent. What poet will 
tell us of his thoughts'? Arrived in 
Eichmond, he was greeted with wild en- 
thusiasm, in which Northern troops who 
had fought against him joined heartily. 



EOBEET E. LEE 121 ^ 

Finally, he escaped from demonstrations 
trying to him, but inspiring to every 
lover of his kind, by entering the modest 
house where his family was waiting to 
receive him. He had left that family 
four years before, the hope of his native 
State. He returned to it the chosen 
hero of the Southern people. He will 
remain the hero of that people and of 
thousands of men and women throughout 
the world who love valor and virtue in 
supreme combination. Those who place 
strenuous power in its rightful position 
of supremacy among human capacities, 
when it is joined with spotless virtue, 
will put Washington, but Washington 
only of all Americans, above him in the 
rolls of fame. But Lee would have been 
prompt to assert Washington's unique 
grandeur; while Washington, could he 
speak to us, would assert Lee's unique i/ 
charm. To the historian the one man 
will be the greater, to the dramatist the 
other J nor will the poet ever cease to 



122 ROBERT E. LEE 

affirm that on the field of Appomattox 
the mighty battle-axe struck down the 
keen Damascus blade. 



I 



YII. 

Lee remained in Eichmond until 
June, when he retired with his family 
to a quiet country place. In the city 
he had been subject to all sorts of inter- 
ruptions, for friend and foe wished to 
see and hear him. While he was too 
great a man to feel bitterness and 
too dignified to be placed in much 
embarrassment, it was only natural that 
he should long for retirement, although 
such devotion as that shown by the 
ragged troopers, who wished to spirit 
him away to the mountains and there 
shield him against threatened arrest, 
must have touched him deeply. He 
was still more touched, however, by the 
helpless condition of his people, and 
never showed himself greater than when 
he applied for pardon, and urged all 
citizens to adapt themselves as far as 
possible to the new regime and to de- 
velop whatever resources their stricken 



124 EGBERT E. LEE 

section possessed. He withdrew his ap- 
plication for amnesty when it looked as 
if he would be tried for treason, but this 
last indignity was not offered him in 
face of Grant's characteristic opposition. 
He proposed to spend his country 
leisure in preparing a history of his 
campaigns ; but, unfortunately, materials 
were hard to collect, and the world has 
been deprived of a valuable and, con- 
sidering Grant's achievement, perhaps 
a very great book. Offers of other and 
more lucrative employment came to him 
from all sides. Even from England he 
had the tender of an estate. But he 
would take no gifts ; and he would not 
sell his name to any enterprise, even 
an honorable one. He would attempt 
nothing for which he did not feel quali- 
fied; and this fine scruptdousness al- 
most kept him from taking a position 
which he afterward adorned, — the presi- 
dency of Washington College at Lexing- 
ton, to which he was elected in August, 



EOBEET E. LEE 125 

1865. How this institution, which had 
been founded on funds bequeathed by 
"Washington, could resume its duties 
amid the general depression was hard to 
see. Indeed, there is an amusing story 
told as to the difficulty with which a 
suitably dressed trustee was secured for 
a necessary interview with General Lee. 
But the installation of the new president 
took place on October 2, and the saying 
that where there's a will there's a way 
received a fresh confirmation. 

Lack of space forbids us to describe at 
any length the five years General Lee 
devoted to his new task. Perhaps as 
clear a proof of his administrative 
capacity as could be desired is furnished 
by the fact that, although a soldier by 
training and profession and a former 
superintendent of West Point, he did 
not seek to cramp the college by intro- 
ducing features of discipline and study 
with which he was familiar. Other 
Southern colleges that called old sol- 



126 EOBEET E. LEE 

diers to their chairs were not so fortu- 
nate; but, then, there was no other 
General Lee to be had. From the ma- 
terial side Lee's presidency was soon 
seen to be a success ; from the intellect- 
ual side equal progress was made, for 
the scheme of studies was enlarged most 
liberally and in the line of modern re- 
quirements ; while from the moral side 
it would have been impossible to obtain 
finer results. Lee's character as a Chris- 
tian and a man dominated the academic 
community ; nor has his influence in all 
likelihood ceased to be felt, although a 
generation has passed away. He knew 
his students personally, and a word from 
him was sufficient to control the wildest 
spirits among them. In short, he was 
an ideal president of a typical American 
college ; and there is no reason to believe 
that he would not have been equal to 
the responsibilities of a great university. 
He was probably right in declining to 
be made Governor of Virginia, for his 



■^ 



EOBEET E. LEE 127 

distinct executive genius hardly seems 
to have been political in character. Yet 
this is by no means certain. What is 
certain is that, much as in Washing- 
ton's case, his splendid moral character 
has for many people cast somewhat in 
the shade his great intellectual powers. 
The opinion is widely prevalent that 
neither Lee nor Washington had a great 
mind; but it may be safely contended 
that this is an utter mistake, due to a 
common inability to recognize greatness 
when mental qualities and capacities are 
admirably balanced. 

Lee's family life during his career at 
Lexington seems to have been so pure 
and beautiful that we may well forbear 
to touch it. It was troubled only by his 
own failing health. Since his exposure 
in 1863 he had suffered from rheuma- 
tism of the heart, and by the fall of 1869 
he began to show plain signs of giving 
way. The winter tried him severely, 
and in the spring of 1870 he took a trip 



128 ROBERT E. LEE ^ 

to Georgia with no permanent good re- 
sults. After a summer at the springs he 
resumed his duties at the college with 
somewhat of his old ardor ; but on Sep- 
tember 28 he had to preside at a vestry 
meeting in a damp, cold church and to 
go home late through the rain. With 
characteristic generosity he had promised 
to make up a deficit in the clergyman^s 
salary; and with equally characteristic 
piety he stood that evening at his tea 
table to say grace, when suddenly his 
voice failed him and he sank into a 
chair. For several days he lingered and 
almost seemed to improve ; but on Octo- 
ber 10 he grew worse, and at nine 
o'clock on the morning of the 12th he 
died, ^^a prisoner of war on parole/' 
with the pathetic exhortation upon his 
lips, ^^Tell Hill he must come up.'' 
How often he had waited for his subor- 
dinates to come up ! Now he himself 
had answered his Master's summons as 
calmly and as grandly as he had obeyed 



ROBERT E. LEE 129 

His commands throughout his long, glo- 
rious life. 

If it remained only to tell of the 
gloom cast over the South by his death, 
of the tributes to his worth that came 
spontaneously from friend and foe, of 
the homage paid his worn-out body in 
Lexington, of the solemn funeral given 
him, of the monuments that have since 
been reared in his honor, our task 
would be comparatively easy. It is ob- 
vious, however, that we must take leave 
of such a man with an attempt to sum 
up his character and achievements ; and 
this is a task from which any historian 
or biographer might well shrink. The 
present writer must frankly confess his 
inadequacy to its performance, but he 
would be false to himself and his hero, 
did he not claim for the latter a place 
among the greatest and finest spirits 
that have ever trod this earth. With 
the supreme men of action, the small 



130 EOBEET E. LEE 

group of statesmen- conquerors, which in- 
cludes Caesar, Alexander, Charlemagne, 
Cromwell, Frederick, Napoleon, Wash- 
ington, and perhaps one or two more, 
he cannot be ranked, because he never 
ruled a realm or a republic, and actually 
shrank in 1862 from assuming the 
responsibilities of commander-in-chief. 
We know, indeed, from his own words 
that he would not have wished to resem- 
ble any of these men save Washington ; 
and we know, also, that he could not 
have entered their class without losing 
the exquisite modesty and unselfishness 
that give him his unique charm. But 
do we, his lovers, wish to put Lee in 
any class, even the highest 1 Should we 
not prefer him to stand alone? If we 
do, we have our wish ; for no one class 
contains him. There is, seemingly, no 
character in all history that combines 
power and virtue and charm as he does. 
He is with the great captains, the su- 
preme leaders of all time. He is with 



EGBERT E. LEE 131 

the good, pure men and chivalrous gen- 
tlemen of all time, — the knights sans 
peur et sans reproche. And he is not 
only in these two noble classes of chosen 
spirits, but he is, in each case, either a 
plain leader or else without any obvious 
superior. But where can another such 
man be found! Of whom besides Lee 
may it be justly said that he is with 
Belisarius and Turenne and Marlborough 
and Moltke on the one hand, and on the 
other with Callicratidas and Saint Louis, 
with the Chevalier Bayard and Sir 
Philip Sidney? 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 

The mass of books and articles that 
deal more or less directly with General 
Lee is so large that to attempt even a 
partial enumeration of them would be 
to attempt a bibliography of the war 
for the Union. Most of the chief gen- 
erals, both of the Army of Northern 
Virginia and of the Army of the Poto- 
mac, have either composed memoirs or 
had their lives written 5 while numerous 
books and monographs have been de- 
voted to special campaigns and battles. 
The general reader will of course pass 
by much of this rapidly accumulating 
literature ; but he will do well to con- 
sult Colonel William Allan's ^^The 
Army of Northern Virginia in 1862 ' ' 
(Boston, 1892; Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co.) ; ^^The Battles and Leaders of the 
Civil War'' (4 vols. New York, 1887 : 
The Century Company) ; the Comte de 
Paris' s ^^ History of the Civil War in 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 133 

America'' (Philadelphia, 1875-1888 ; 
J. H. Coates & Co.) ; General Grant's 
^^ Personal Memoirs" (New York, 1885: 
C. L. Webster & Co.) ; and J. C. Ropes' s 
^^The Story of the Civil War" (New 
York, 1898 : G. P. Putnam's Sons) ; as 
well as the chief books relative to the 
careers of Generals J. E. Johnston, T. J. 
Jackson, Beauregard, Longstreet, Stuart, 
Meade, McClellan, etc. The volumi- 
nous war records, the papers of the 
Southern Historical Society, and the 
two series of monographs known as 
^ ^ Great (Commanders " (New York: D. 
Appleton & Co.) and ^^ Campaigns of 
the Civil War" (New York: Chas. 
Scribner's Sons) should also be men- 
tioned. 

Of specific books and articles dealing 
primarily with the biography of General 
Lee, the lives and accounts by 

I. James Dabney McCabe (Atlanta, 
1866 : National Publishing Company), 



134 BIBLIOGEAPHY 

II. E. A. Pollard (Kew York, 1871: 
E. B. Treat & Co.), 

III. John Esten Cooke (New York, 
1871 : D. Appleton & Co.), and 

IV. Emily V. Mason (Baltimore, 1874 : 
J. Murphy & Co.) 

were early attempts to supply popular 
information to the people of the South 
about their chosen hero. 

V. Personal Eeminiscences, Anec- 
dotes, AND Letters of General Eob- 
ERT E. Lee (New York, 1874 : D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. ) is not a formal life, but is 
very useful as a source of materials. 

YI. Four Years with General Lee, 
by Colonel W. H. Taylor (New York, 
1878 : D. Appleton & Co. ), is valuable 
as being the record of one of Lee's staff 
of&cers. 

VII. Memoirs of General Eobert E. 
Lee, by General A. L. Long (New 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 135 

York, 1887 : J. M. Stoddart & Co.), is 
one of the fullest and most important of 
all the biographies. General Long was 
one of Lee's military secretaries and one 
of his most intimate friends. 

VIII. The Great Commanders Series 
(New York, 1894 : D. Appleton & Co. ) 
contains a good though brief biography 
of General Lee by his nephew, General 
Fitzhugh Lee, and 

IX. The Heroes of the Nations Se- 
ries (New York, 1897 : G. P. Putnam's 
Sons) one by Professor Henry A. White, 
of Washington and Lee University. 



iB D V 



The beacon BIOGRAPHIES. 

M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE, Editor. 



The aim of this series is to furnish brief, readable, and 
authentic accounts of the lives of those Americans whose 
personalities have impressed themselves most deeply on the 
character and history of their country. On account of the 
length of the more formal lives, often running into large 
volumes, the average busy man and woman have not the 
time or hardly the inclination to acquaint themselves with 
American biography. In the present series everything that 
such a reader would ordinarily care to know is given by 
writers of special competence, who possess in full measure 
the best contemporary point of view. Each volume is 
equipped with a frontispiece portrait, a calendar of important 
dates, and a brief bibliography for further reading. Finally, 
the volumes are printed in a form convenient for reading 
and for carrying handily in the pocket. 

The following volumes are the first issued : — 
PHILLIPS BROOKS, by the Editor. 
DAVID G. FARRAGUT, by James Barnes. 
ROBERT E. LEE, by W. P. Trent. 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, by Edward Everett 

Hale, Jr. 
DANIEL WEBSTER, by Norman Hapgood. 

The following are among those in preparation : — 
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, by John Burroughs. 
EDWIN BOOTH, by Charles Townsend Copkland. 
AARON BURR, by Henry Childs Merwin. 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, by W. B. Shubrick 

Clymer. 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, by Lindsay Swirr. 



SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers, 
6 Beacon Street, Boston. 






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